Book 9
38.3
As long as they were scattered through the fields they met nobody, though they might have been cut off to a man, but when they returned, thinking themselves perfectly safe, they were overtaken by the peasants and stripped of all their plunder. Some were killed; the survivors were driven helter-skelter to their ships.
38.4
However great the alarm created in Rome by Q. Fabius' expedition through the Ciminian forest, there was quite as much pleasure felt by the Samnites when they heard of it. They said that the Roman army was hemmed in; it was the Caudine disaster over again;
38.5
the old recklessness had again led a nation always greedy for further conquests into an impassable forest; they were beset by the difficulties of the ground quite as much as by hostile arms.
38.6
Their delight was, however, tinged with envy when they reflected that fortune had diverted the glory of finishing the war with Rome from the Samnites to the Etruscans.
38.7
So they concentrated their whole strength to crush C. Marcius or, if he did not give them a chance of fighting, to march through the country of the Marsi and Sabines into Etruria. The consul advanced against them, and a desperate battle was fought with no decisive result.
