He said, "Why do I any longer defer the fate entailed on my family?
It is destined to our race, that we should serve as expiatory victims to avert the public danger.

I will now offer the legions of the enemy, together with myself, to be immolated to Earth, and the infernal gods." Having thus said, he commanded Marcus Livius, a pontiff, whom, at his coming out to the field, he had charged not to stir from him, to dictate the form of words in which he was to devote himself, and the legions of the enemy, for the army of the Roman people, the Quirites.

He was accordingly devoted with the same imprecations, and in the same habit, in which his father, Publius Decius, had ordered himself to be devoted at the Veseris in the Latin war.

When, immediately after the solemn imprecation, he added, that "he drove before him dismay and flight, slaughter and blood, and the wrath of the gods celestial and infernal, that, with the contagious influence of the furies, the ministers of death, he would infect the standards, the weapons, and the armour of the enemy, and that the same spot should be that of his perdition, and that of the Gauls and Samnites." After uttering these execrations on himself and the foe, he spurred forward his horse, where he saw the line of the Gauls thickest, and, rushing upon the enemy's weapons, met his death.
29.

Thenceforward the battle seemed to be fought with a degree of force scarcely human.