engagement in the field with the
Etruscans; the Veientines, however, had scarcely time to draw up their
line: for, during the first alarm, while they were entering the lines
behind their colours, and they were stationing their reserves, a
brigade of Roman cavalry, charging them suddenly in flank, deprived
them of all opportunity not only of opening the fight, but even of
standing their ground. Thus being driven back to the Red Rocks [64].
(where they had pitched their camp), as suppliants they sued for
peace; and, after it was granted, owing to the natural inconsistency
of their minds, they regretted it even before the Roman garrison was
withdrawn from the Cremera.

Again the Veientine state had to contend with the Fabii without any
additional military armament: and not merely did they make raids into
each other's territories, or sudden attacks upon those carrying on
the raids, but they fought repeatedly on level ground, and in pitched
battles: and one family of the Roman people oftentimes gained the
victory over an entire Etruscan state, and a most powerful one for
those times. This at first appeared mortifying and humiliating to the
Veientines: then they conceived the design, suggested by the state of
affairs, of surprising their daring enemy by an ambuscade; they were
even glad that the confidence of the Fabii was increasing owing to
their great success. Wherefore cattle were frequently driven in the
path of the plundering parties, as if they had fallen in their way
by accident, and tracts of land left abandoned by the flight of
the peasants: and reserve bodies of armed men, sent to prevent the
devastations, retreated more frequently in pretended than in real
alarm. By this time the Fabii had conceived such contempt for the
enemy that they believed that their arms, as yet invincible, could not
be resisted either in any place or on any occasion: this presumption
carried them so far that at the sight of some cattle at a distance
from Cremera, with an extensive plain lying between, they ran down to
them, in spite of the fact that some scattered bodies of the enemy
were visible: and when, anticipating nothing, and in disorderly haste,
they had passed the ambuscade placed on either side of the road
itself, and, dispersed in different directions, had begun to carry off
the cattle that were straying about, as is usual when frightened, the
enemy started suddenly in a body from their ambuscade, and surrounded
them both in fr