They proceeded about eleven miles from the city, and halted for the
night on the banks of the river Allia, which joins the Tiber not far
from where their camp was pitched. Here the barbarians appeared, and,
after an unskilfully managed battle, the want of discipline of the
Romans caused their ruin. The Gauls drove the left wing into the river
and destroyed it, but the right of the army, which took refuge in the
hills to avoid the enemy's charge on level ground, suffered less, and
most of them reached the city safely. The rest, who survived after the
enemy were weary of slaughter, took refuge at Veii, imagining that all
was over with Rome.
XIX. This battle took place about the summer solstice at the time of
full moon, on the very day on which in former times the great disaster
befel the Fabii, when three hundred of that race were slain by the
Etruscans. But this defeat wiped out the memory of the former one, and
the day was always afterwards called that of the Allia, from the river
of that name.
It is a vexed question whether we ought to consider some days unlucky,
or whether Herakleitus was right in rebuking Hesiod for calling some
days good and some bad, because he knew not that the nature of all days
is the same. However the mention of a few remarkable instances is
germane to the matter of which we are treating. It happened that on the
fifth day of the Boeotian month Hippodromios, which the Athenians call
Hekatombeion,[A] two signal victories were won by the Boeotians, both of
which restored liberty to Greece; one, when they conquered the Spartans
at Leuktra, and the other, when, more than two hundred years before
this, they conquered the Thessalians under Lattamyas at Keressus.
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