caution, was wounded, and with difficulty
rescued by those around him. This both damped the courage of his own
men, and increased the boldness of the enemy; who, being encouraged
by the death of the lieutenant, and by the consul's wound, could not
afterward have been withstood by any force, as the Romans, having been
driven into their camp, were again being besieged, being a match for
them neither in hopes nor in strength, and the very existence of the
state would have been imperilled, had not Titus Quinctius come to
their relief with foreign troops, the Latin and Hernican army. He
attacked the Aequans on their rear while their attention was fixed on
the Roman camp, and while they were insultingly displaying the head of
the lieutenant: and, a sally being made at the same time from the camp
at a signal given by himself from a distance, he surrounded a large
force of the enemy. Of the Aequans in Roman territory the slaughter
was less, their flight more disorderly. As they straggled in different
directions, driving their plunder before them, Postumius attacked
them in several places, where he had posted bodies of troops in
advantageous positions. They, while straying about and pursuing their
flight in great disorder, fell in with the victorious Quinctius as he
was returning with the wounded consul. Then the consular army by its
distinguished bravery amply avenged the consul's wound, and the death
of the lieutenant and the slaughter of the cohorts; heavy losses were
both inflicted and received on both sides during those days. In a
matter of such antiquity it is difficult to state, so as to inspire
conviction, the exact number of those who fought or fell: Antias
Valerius, however, ventures to give an estimate of the numbers: that
in the Hernican territory there fell five thousand eight hundred
Romans; that of the predatory parties of the Aequans, who strayed
through the Roman frontiers for the purpose of plundering, two
thousand four hundred were slain by the consul Aulus Postumius; that
the rest of the body which fell in with Quinctius while driving its
booty before them, by no means got off with a loss equally small: of
these he asserts that four thousand, and by way of stating the number
exactly, two hundred and thirty were slain. After their return to
Rome, the cessation of business was abandoned. The sky seemed to be
all ablaze with fire; and other prodigies either actually presented
themselves before men's eyes, or exh