Presently the barbarians patrolling around the walls in troops, they heard their yells and the dissonant clangour of their arms.

All the interval up to the next day kept their minds in such a state of suspense, that an assault seemed every moment about to be made on the city: on their first approach, when they arrived at the city, [it was expected;] for if this were not their design, that they would have remained at the Allia; then towards sunset, because there was not much of the day remaining, they imagined that they would attack them before night; then that the design was deferred until night, in order to strike the greater terror.

At length the approach of light struck them with dismay; and the calamity itself followed closely upon their continued apprehension of it, when the troops entered the gates in hostile array.

During that night, however, and the following day, the state by no means bore any resemblance to that which which had fled in so dastardly a manner at the Allia.

For as there was not a hope that the city could be defended, so small a number of troops now remaining, it was determined that the youth fit for military service, and the abler part of the senate with their wives and children, should retire into the citadel and Capitol; and having collected stores of arms and corn, and thence from a fortified post, that they should defend the deities, and the inhabitants, and the Roman name: that the flamen [Quirinalis] and the vestal priestesses should carry away far from slaughter and conflagration the objects appertaining to the religion of the state: and that their worship should not be intermitted, until there remained no one who should continue it.