a centurion, Marcus Flavoleius, one of the foremost in demanding battle:  said he, “Marcus Fabius, I will return victorious from the field.”  He invoked upon himself, should he deceive them, the wrath of Father Jove, Mars Gradivus, and the other gods.  After him in succession the whole army severally took the same oath.  After they had been sworn, the signal was given:  they took up arms and marched into battle, full of rage and of hope.  They bade the Etruscans now utter their reproaches:  now severally demanded that the enemy, so ready of tongue, should face them, now that they were armed.  On that day, both commons and patricians alike showed distinguished bravery:  the Fabian family shone forth most conspicuous:  they were determined to recover in that battle the affections of the commons, estranged by many civil contests.

The army was drawn up in order of battle; nor did the Veientine foe and the Etruscan legions decline the contest.  They entertained an almost certain hope that the Romans would no more fight with them than they had with the Aequans; that even some more serious attempt was not to be despaired of, considering the sorely irritated state of their feelings, and the critical condition of affairs.  The result turned out altogether different:  for never before in any other war did the Roman soldiers enter the field with greater fury, so exasperated were they by the taunts of the enemy on the one hand, and the dilatoriness of the consuls on the other.  Before the Etruscans had time to form their ranks, their javelins having been rather thrown away at random, in the first confusion, than aimed at the enemy, the battle had become a hand-to-hand encounter, even with swords, in which the fury of war rages most fiercely.  Among the foremost the Fabian family was distinguished for the sight it afforded and the example it presented to its fellow-citizens; one of these, Quintus Fabius, who had been consul two years before, as he advanced at the head of his men against a dense body of Veientines, and incautiously engaged amid numerous parties of the enemy, received a sword-thrust through the breast at the hands of a Tuscan emboldened by his bodily strength and skill in arms:  on the weapon being extracted, Fabius fell forward on the wound.  Both armies felt the fall of this one man, and the Romans in consequence were beginning to give way, when the consul Marcus Fabius leaped over the body of his prostrate kinsman, and, holding his buckler in front, cried out:  “Is this what you swore, soldiers, that you would return to the camp in flight?  Are you so afraid of your most cowardly foes, rather than of Jupiter and Mars, by whom you have sworn?  Well, then, I, who have taken no oath, will either return victorious, or will fall fighting here beside thee, Quintus Fabius.”  Then Caeso Fabius, the consul of the preceding year, addressed the consul:  “Brother, is it by these words you think you will prevail on them to fight?  The gods, by whom they have sworn, will bring it about.  Let us also, as becomes men of noble birth, as is worthy of the Fabian name, kindle the courage of the soldiers by fighting rather than by exhortation.”  Thus the two Fabii rushed forward to the front with spears presented, and carried the whole line with them.