on of the peasantry: the sudden
alarm, reaching the city from the country, was the first announcement
of the invasion. Romulus aroused by this--for a war so near home could
not brook delay--led out his army, and pitched his camp a mile from
Fidenae. Having left a small garrison there, he marched out with all
his forces and gave orders that a part of them should lie in ambush in
a spot hidden amid bushes planted thickly around; he himself advancing
with the greater part of the infantry and all the cavalry, by riding
up almost to the very gates, drew out the enemy--which was just what
he wanted--by a mode of battle of a disorderly and threatening nature.
The same tactics on the part of the cavalry caused the flight, which
it was necessary to pretend, to appear less surprising: and when, as
the cavalry appeared undecided whether to make up its mind to fight or
flee, the infantry also retreated--the enemy, pouring forth suddenly
through the crowded gates, were drawn toward the place of ambuscade,
in their eagerness to press on and pursue, after they had broken the
Roman line. Thereupon the Romans, suddenly arising, attacked the
enemy's line in flanks; the advance from the camp of the standards of
those, who had been left behind on guard, increased the panic: thus
the Fidenates, smitten with terror from many quarters, took to flight
almost before Romulus and the cavalry who accompanied him could wheel
round: and those who a little before had been in pursuit of men who
pretended flight, made for the town again in much greater disorder,
seeing that their flight was real. They did not, however, escape the
foe: the Romans, pressing closely on their rear, rushed in as if it
were in one body, before the doors of the gates could be shut against
them.

The minds of the inhabitants of Veii,[14] being exasperated by the
infectious influence of the Fidenatian war, both from the tie of
kinship--for the Fidenates also were Etruscans--and because the very
proximity of the scene of action, in the event of the Roman arms being
directed against all their neighbours, urged them on, they sallied
forth into the Roman territories, rather with the object of plundering
than after the manner of a regular war. Accordingly, without pitching
a camp, or waiting for the enemy's army, they returned to Veii, taking
with them the booty they had carried off from the lands; the Roman
army, on the other hand, when they did not find the enemy in the
country,