Читать книгу THE HISTORY OF ROME (Complete Edition in 4 Volumes) - Livy - Страница 288

The vast multitude who went filled the camp. Then the dictator, going forth after taking the auspices, having issued orders that the soldiers should take arms, says, "Under thy guidance, O Pythian Apollo, and inspired by thy divinity, I proceed to destroy the city of Veii, and I vow to thee the tenth part of the spoil.163 Thee also, queen Juno, who inhabitest Veii, I beseech, that thou wilt accompany us, when victors, into our city, soon to be thine, where a temple worthy of thy majesty shall receive thee."164 Having offered up these prayers, there being more than a sufficient number of men, he assaults the city on every quarter, in order that the perception of the danger threatening them from the mine might be diminished. The Veientians, ignorant that they had already been doomed by their own prophets, already by foreign oracles, that the gods had been already invited to a share in their plunder, that some, called out by vows from their city, were looking towards the temple of the enemy and new habitations, and that they were spending that the last day (of their existence), fearing nothing less than that, their walls being undermined, the citadel was now filled with enemies, briskly run to the walls in arms, wondering what could be the reason that, when no one had stirred from the Roman posts for so many days, then, as if struck with sudden fury, they should run heedlessly to the walls. A fabulous narrative is introduced here, that, when the king of the Veientians was offering sacrifice, the voice of the aruspex, declaring that the victory was given to him who should cut up the entrails of that victim, having been heard in the mine, incited the Roman soldiers to burst open the mine, carry off the entrails, and bring them to the dictator. But in matters of such remote antiquity, I should deem it sufficient, if matters bearing a resemblance to truth be admitted as true. Such stories as this, more suited to display on the stage, which delights in the marvellous, than to historic authenticity, it is not worth while either to affirm or refute. The mine, at this time full of chosen men, suddenly discharged the armed troops in the temple of Juno which was in the citadel of Veii.165 Some of them attack the rear of the enemy on the walls; some tore open the bars of the gates; some set fire to the houses, while stones and tiles were thrown down from the roofs by the women and slaves. Clamour, consisting of the various voices of the assailants and the terrified, mixed with the crying of women and children, fills every place. The soldiers being in an instant beaten off from the walls, and the gates being thrown open, some entering in bodies, others scaling the deserted walls, the city become filled with enemies, fighting takes place in every quarter. Then, much slaughter being now made, the ardour of the fight abates; and the dictator commands the heralds to proclaim that the unarmed should be spared. This put an end to bloodshed. Then laying down their arms, they commenced to surrender; and, by permission of the dictator, the soldiers disperse in quest of plunder. And when this was collected before his eyes, greater in quantity and in the value of the effects than he had hoped or expected, the dictator, raising his hands to heaven, is said to have prayed, "that, if his success and that of the Roman people seemed excessive to any of the gods and men, it might be permitted to the Roman people to appease that jealousy with as little detriment as possible to himself and the Roman people."166 It is recorded that, when turning about during this prayer, he stumbled and fell; and to persons judging of the matter by subsequent events, that seemed to refer as an omen to Camillus' own condemnation, and the disaster of the city of Rome being akin, which happened a few years after. And that day was consumed in slaughtering the enemy and in the plunder of this most opulent city.