20.
Quintus Marcius, having completed the inquiries in his district, prepared at length to proceed into the province of Liguria, for the service of which he received a supply of three thousand Roman foot and one hundred and fifty horse, with five thousand Latin foot and two hundred horse.
[2]
The same province, and the same numbers of horse and foot, had been voted to his colleague, and they received the armies which, during the preceding year, the consuls, Caius Flaminius and Marcus Aemilius, had commanded.
[3]
They were also ordered, by a decree of the senate, to raise two new legions, and they demanded from the allies and Latins twenty thousand foot and one thousand three hundred horse; besides, they levied three thousand Roman foot and two hundred horse.
[4]
It was resolved that all this army, except the legions, should be led to reinforce the army in Spain. The consuls, therefore, while they themselves were engaged in the inquisitions, appointed Titus Maenius to hold the levy.
[5]
When the trials were finished, Quintus Marcius first marched against the Apuan Ligurians. While he pursued these into very remote fastnesses, which
[6??]
had always served them as lurking-places and receptacles, he was surrounded in a disadvantageous position, a narrow defile which the enemy had previously seized.
[7]
Here four thousand soldiers fell, and three standards of the second legion, with eleven ensigns of the Latin allies, were taken; abundance of arms were likewise lost, which were thrown away by the men in every direction, because they impeded their flight through the woody paths. The Ligurians ceased to pursue, sooner than the Romans to fly.
[8]
As soon as the consul had effected his escape out of the enemy's territories, he disbanded the troops, in the country of their friends, in order that the greatness of the loss sustained might not appear.
[9]
But he could not obliterate all memorial of his misconduct; for the pass, from which the Ligurians put him to flight, has been called the Marcian pass.
[10]
[p. 1813]
Livy. History of Rome by Titus Livius, books thirty-seven to the end, with the epitomes and fragments of the lost books. literally translated, with notes and illustrations, by. William A. McDevitte. York Street, Covent Garden, London. Henry G. Bohn. John Child and son, printers, Bungay. 1850. 4.
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