to join him;” adding, that “he would act on the defensive, and defer engaging in battle, until his arrival.”  The same reason which made the consul wish to decline an action, induced the Gauls, whose spirits were raised by the backwardness of their antagonists, to bring it on as soon as possible, that they might finish the affair before the two consuls should unite their forces.  However, during two days, they did nothing more than stand in readiness for battle, if any should come out against them.  On the third, they advanced furiously to the rampart, and assaulted the camp on every side at once.  The consul immediately ordered his men to take arms, and kept them quiet, under arms, for some time; both to add to the foolish confidence of the enemy, and to arrange his troops at the gates, through which each party was to sally out.  The two legions were ordered to march by the two principal gates; but, in the very pass of the gates, the Gauls opposed them in such close bodies as to stop up the way.  The fight was maintained a long time in these narrow passes; nor were their hands or swords much employed in the business, but pushing with their shields and bodies, they pressed against each other, the Romans struggling to force their standards beyond the gates, the Gauls, to break into the camp, or, at least, to hinder the Romans from issuing forth.  However, neither party could make the least impression on the other, until Quintus Victorius, a first centurion, and Caius Atinius, a military tribune, the former of the second, the latter of the fourth legion, had taken a course often tried in desperate conflicts; snatching the standards from the officers who carried them, and throwing them among the enemy.  In the struggle to recover the standards, the men of the second legion first made their way out of the gate.

[Footnote 1:  397l. 17s. 6d.]

[Footnote 2:  17l. 8s. 9d.]

[Footnote 3:  17s. 5-1/2d.]

47.  These were now fighting on the outside of the rampart, the fourth legion still entangled in the gate, when a new alarm arose on the opposite side of the camp.  The Gauls had broke in by the Quaestorian gate, and had slain the quaestor, Lucius Postumius, surnamed Tympanus, with Marcus Atinius and Publius Sempronius, praefects of the allies, who made an obstinate resistance; and also, near two hundred soldiers.  The camp in that part had been taken, when a cohort of those who are called Extraordinaries, having been sent by the consul to defend the Quaestorian gate, killed some who had got within the rampart, drove out the rest, and opposed others who were attempting to break in.  About the same time, the fourth legion, and two cohorts of Extraordinaries, burst out of the gate; and thus there were three battles, in different places, round the camp; while the various kinds of shouts raised by them, called off the attention of the combatants from their own immediate conflict to the uncertain casualties which threatened their