with presumption and precipitation; and, that he might fall the more readily into the errors natural to him, the Carthaginian begins to fret and irritate him; and leaving the enemy on his left, he takes the road to Faesulae, and marching through the centre of Etruria, with intent to plunder, he exhibits to the consul, in the distance, the greatest devastation he could with fires and slaughters.  Flaminius, who would not have rested even if the enemy had remained quiet; then, indeed, when he saw the property of the allies driven and carried away almost before his eyes, considering that it reflected disgrace upon him that the Carthaginian now roaming at large through the heart of Italy, and marching without resistance to storm the very walls of Rome, though every other person in the council advised safe rather than showy measures, urging that he should wait for his colleague, in order that, joining their armies, they might carry on the war with united courage and counsels; and that, meanwhile, the enemy should be prevented from his unrestrained freedom in plundering by the cavalry and the light-armed auxiliaries; in a fury hurried out of the council, and at once gave out the signal for marching and for battle.  “Nay, rather,” says he, “let him be before the walls of Arretium, for here is our country, here our household gods.  Let Hannibal, slipping through our fingers, waste Italy through and through; and, ravaging and burning every thing, let him arrive at the walls of Rome; let us move hence till the fathers shall have summoned Flaminius from Arretium, as they did Camillus of old from Veii.”  While reproaching them thus, and in the act of ordering the standards to be speedily pulled up, when he had mounted upon his horse, the animal fell suddenly, and threw the unseated consul over his head.  All the bystanders being alarmed at this as an unhappy omen in the commencement of the affair, in addition word is brought, that the standard could not be pulled up, though, the standard-bearer strove with all his force.  Flaminius, turning to the messenger, says, “Do you bring, too, letters from the senate, forbidding me to act.  Go, tell them to dig up the standard, if, through fear, their hands are so benumbed that they cannot pluck it up.”  Then the army began to march; the chief officers, besides that they dissented from the plan, being terrified by the twofold prodigy; while the soldiery in general were elated by the confidence of their leader, since they regarded merely the hope he entertained, and not the reasons of the hope.

4.  Hannibal lays waste the country between the city Cortona and the lake Trasimenus, with all the devastation of war, the more to exasperate the enemy to revenge the injuries inflicted on his allies.  They had now reached a place formed by nature for an ambuscade, where the Trasimenus comes nearest to the mountains of Cortona.  A very narrow passage only intervenes, as though room enough just for that purpose had been left designedly; after that a somewhat wider