they continued standing upright, but would fall when impelled by a slight force.  Posthumius had with him two Roman legions, and besides had levied so great a number of allies along the Adriatic Sea, that he led into the enemy’s country twenty-five thousand men.  As soon as this army entered the wood, the Gauls, who were posted around its extreme skirts, pushed down the outermost of the sawn trees, which falling on those next them, and these again on others which of themselves stood tottering and scarcely maintained their position, crushed arms, men, and horses in an indiscriminate manner, so that scarcely ten men escaped.  For, most of them being killed by the trunks and broken boughs of trees, the Gauls, who beset the wood on all sides in arms killed the rest, panic-struck by so unexpected a disaster.  A very small number, who attempted to escape by a bridge, were taken prisoners, being intercepted by the enemy who had taken possession of it before them.  Here Posthumius fell, fighting with all his might to prevent his being taken.  The Boii having cut off his head, carried it and the spoils they stole off his body, in triumph into the most sacred temple they had.  Afterwards they cleansed the head according to their custom, and having covered the skull with chased gold, used it as a cup for libations in their solemn festivals, and a drinking cup for their high priests and other ministers of the temple.  The spoils taken by the Gauls were not less than the victory.  For though great numbers of the beasts were crushed by the falling trees, yet as nothing was scattered by flight, every thing else was found strewed along the whole line of the prostrate band.

25.  The news of this disaster arriving, when the state had been in so great a panic for many days, that the shops were shut up as if the solitude of night reigned through the city; the senate gave it in charge to the aediles to go round the city, cause the shops to be opened, and this appearance of public affliction to be removed.  Then Titus Sempronius, having assembled the senate, consoled and encouraged the fathers, requesting, “that they who had sustained the defeat at Cannae with so much magnanimity would not now be cast down with less calamities.  That if their arms should prosper, as he hoped they would, against Hannibal and the Carthaginians, the war with the Gauls might be suspended and deferred without hazard.  The gods and the Roman people would have it in their power to revenge the treachery of the Gauls another time.  That they should now deliberate about the Carthaginian foe, and the forces with which the war was to be prosecuted.”  He first laid before them the number of foot and horse, as well citizens as allies, that were in the dictator’s army.  Then Marcellus gave an account of the amount in his.  Those who knew were asked what troops were in Apulia with Caius Terentius Varro the consul.  But no practicable plan could be devised for raising consular armies sufficient to support so important