hundred horse.  He said, that “with such a legion as that, (for very little confidence could be placed on the troops of Sextus Digitius,) he would conduct the war.”  But the elder part of the senate insisted, that “decrees of the senate were not to be passed in consequence of rumours fabricated by private persons for the gratification of magistrates; and that no intelligence should be deemed authentic except it were either written by the praetors, from their provinces, or brought by their deputies.  If there was a tumultuous commotion in Spain, they advised a vote, that tumultuary soldiers should be levied by the praetor in some other country than Italy.”  The senate’s intention was that such description of men should be raised in Spain.  Valerius Antias says, that Caius Flaminius sailed to Sicily for the purpose of levying troops, and that, on his voyage thence to Spain, being driven by a storm to Africa, he enlisted there many stragglers who had belonged to the army of Publius Africanus; and that, to the levies made in those two provinces, he added a third in Spain.

3.  In Italy the war, commenced by the Ligurians, grew daily more formidable.  They now invested Pisae, with an army of forty thousand men; for multitudes flocked to them continually, led by the reports of the war and the expectation of booty.  The consul, Minucius, came to Arretium, on the day which he had fixed for the assembling of the troops.  Thence he led them, in order of battle, towards Pisae; and though the enemy had removed their camp to the other side of the river, at a distance of no more than three miles from the place, the consul marched into the city, which evidently owed its preservation to his coming.  Next day he also encamped on the other side of the river, about a mile from the enemy; and by slight skirmishes protected the lands of the allies from their depredations.  He did not think it prudent to hazard a general engagement, because his troops were raw, composed of many different kinds of men, and not yet so well known among themselves that they could rely on one another.  The Ligurians depended so much on their numbers, that they not only came out and offered battle, willing to risk every thing on the issue of it; but, from their superfluity of men, they sent out many parties along the frontiers to plunder; and whenever a large quantity of cattle, and other prey, was collected, there was an escort always in readiness to convey it to their forts and towns.

4.  While the operations remained at a stand at Pisae, the other consul, Lucius Cornelius Merula, led his army through the extreme borders of the Ligurians, into the territory of the Boians, where the mode of proceeding was quite the reverse of that which took place in the war of Liguria.  The consul took the field; the enemy refused to fight; and the Romans, when no one would come out against them, went out in parties to plunder, while the Boians chose to let their country be laid waste with impunity rather than