spread their dominion over the central part of Italy.

They were well used to Italian and Etruscan ways of making war, but
after nearly 400 years of this kind of fighting, a stranger and wilder
enemy came upon them. These were the Gauls, a tall strong, brave people,
long limbed and red-haired, of the same race as the highlanders of
Scotland. They had gradually spread themselves over the middle of
Europe, and had for some generations past lived among the Alpine
mountains, whence they used to come down upon the rich plans of northern
Italy for forays, in which they slew and burnt, and drove off cattle,
and now and then, when a country was quite depopulated, would settle
themselves in it. And thus, the Gauls conquering from the north and the
Romans from the south, these two fierce nations at length came against
one another.

The old Roman story is that it happened thus: The Gauls had an unusually
able leader, whom Latin historians call Brennus, but whose real name was
most likely Bran, and who is said to have come out of Britain. He had
brought a great host of Gauls to attack Clusium, a Tuscan city, and the
inhabitants sent to Rome to entreat succor. Three ambassadors, brothers
of the noble old family of Fabius, were sent from Rome to intercede for
the Clusians. They asked Brennus what harm the men of Clusium had done
the Gauls, that they thus made war on them, and, according to Plutarch's
account, Brennus made answer that the injury was that the Clusians
possessed land that the Gauls wanted, remarking that it was exactly the
way in which the Romans themselves treated their neighbors, adding,
however, that this was neither cruel nor unjust, but according--


'To the good old plan