History of Rome

​The Gauls also were held as if astounded by the miracle of so sudden a victory, and they themselves stood at first transfixed with fear, as if ignorant of what had happened; then they began to fear an ambush; finally, they gathered the spoils of the slain and piled up the heaps of arms, as is their custom;

​then at last, after nothing hostile was seen anywhere, they set out on their way and arrived at the city of Rome not much before sunset. Where, when the horsemen sent ahead reported that the gates were not closed, that no guard was on watch before the gates, and that there were no armed men on the walls, another miracle similar to the former held them;

​and fearing the night and the layout of the unknown city, they encamped between Rome and the Anio, sending out scouts around the walls and the other gates to find out what plans the enemy might have in their desperate situation. The Romans, ​since a larger part had gone from the battle line to Veii than to Rome, and no one believed that anyone survived except those who had fled to Rome, filled almost the entire city with lamentations, mourning all alike, both the living and the dead.

​Then private grief was numbed by public panic, after it was announced that the enemy was at hand; soon they heard the discordant howling and chants, with the barbarians wandering in troops around the walls.

​From then on, all the time until the next daybreak held their minds in such suspense that a assault upon the city seemed continually about to happen; first at their arrival, because they had approached the city—for they would have remained at the Allia had this not been their plan—;

​then towards sunset, because not much of the day was left, they thought they would attack before night; then they thought the plan had been deferred into the night to strike more terror; finally, the approaching dawn drove them out of their minds with fear;

​and the disaster itself followed closely upon their continuous fear, when the hostile standards were brought up to the gates. Yet, neither on that night nor on the following day was the city at all similar to that army which had fled so fearfully at the Allia.

​For since there was no hope that the city could be defended by so small a force as remained, it was resolved that the military youth and the strength of the senate, with their wives and children, should withdraw into the citadel and the Capitol, and there, ​with arms and grain collected in that fortified place, defend the gods, men, and the Roman name;

​that the flamen and the Vestal virgins should carry the public sacred things far away from slaughter and fire, and that the worship of the gods should not be abandoned until there were none left to worship them.

​If the citadel and the Capitol, the seat of the gods, if the senate, the head of public counsel, if the military youth survived the imminent ruin of the city, they thought the loss of the older people left in the city, who were doomed to perish in any case, would be easy to bear.

​And so that the multitude of the plebeians might bear this with a calmer mind, the old men who had celebrated triumphs and held consulships openly declared that they would die together with them, and would not burden the scarcity of the armed men with those bodies with which they could neither bear arms nor protect their country.