Book 9
31.3
Enraged at this brutality, Junius felt that the first thing to be done was to attack Cluvia, and on the very day he arrived before the place he took it by storm and put all the adult males to death. Thence his conquering army marched to Bovianum.
31.4
This was the chief city of the Pentrian Samnites, and by far the wealthiest and best supplied with arms.
31.5
There was not the same cause for resentment here as at Cluvia, the soldiers were mainly animated by the prospect of plunder, and on the capture of the place the enemy were treated with less severity; but there was almost more booty collected there than from all the rest of Samnium, and the whole of it was generously given up to the soldiers.
31.6
Now that nothing could withstand the overwhelming might of Roman arms, neither armies nor camps nor cities, the one idea in the minds of all the Samnite leaders was to choose some position from which Roman troops when scattered on their foraging expeditions might be caught and surrounded.
31.7
Some peasants who pretended to be deserters and some who had, either deliberately or by accident, been made prisoners, came to the consuls with a story in which they all agreed, and which really was true, namely, that an immense quantity of cattle had been driven into a pathless forest. The consuls were induced by this story to send the legions, with nothing but their kits to encumber them, in the direction the cattle had taken, to secure them.
