With these people, indeed, there was peace contrary to expectations:  but another war broke out much nearer home and almost at the city’s gates.  The Fidenates,[13] being of opinion that a power in too close proximity to themselves was gaining strength, hastened to make war before the power of the Romans should attain the greatness it was evidently destined to reach.  An armed band of youths was sent into Roman territory and all the territories between the city and the Fidenae was ravaged.  Then, turning to the left, because on the right the Tiber was a barrier against them, they continued to ravage the country, to the great consternation of the peasantry:  the sudden alarm, reaching the city from the country, was the first announcement of the invasion.  Romulus aroused by this—­for a war so near home could not brook delay—­led out his army, and pitched his camp a mile from Fidenae.  Having left a small garrison there, he marched out with all his forces and gave orders that a part of them should lie in ambush in a spot hidden amid bushes planted thickly around; he himself advancing with the greater part of the infantry and all the cavalry, by riding up almost to the very gates, drew out the enemy—­which was just what he wanted—­by a mode of battle of a disorderly and threatening nature.  The same tactics on the part of the cavalry caused the flight, which it was necessary to pretend, to appear less surprising:  and when, as the cavalry appeared undecided whether to make up its mind to fight or flee, the infantry also retreated—­the enemy, pouring forth suddenly through the crowded gates, were drawn toward the place of ambuscade, in their eagerness to press on and pursue, after they had broken the Roman line.  Thereupon the Romans, suddenly arising, attacked the enemy’s line in flanks; the advance from the camp of the standards of those, who had been left behind on guard, increased the panic:  thus the Fidenates, smitten with terror from many quarters, took to flight almost before Romulus and the cavalry who accompanied him could wheel round:  and those who a little before had been in pursuit of men who pretended flight, made for the town again in much greater disorder, seeing that their flight was real.  They did not, however, escape the foe:  the Romans, pressing closely on their rear, rushed in as if it were in one body, before the doors of the gates could be shut against them.

The minds of the inhabitants of Veii,[14] being exasperated by the infectious influence of the Fidenatian war, both from the tie of kinship—­for the Fidenates also were Etruscans—­and because the very proximity of the scene of action, in the event of the Roman arms being directed against all their neighbours, urged them on, they sallied forth into the Roman territories, rather with the object of plundering than after the manner of a regular war.  Accordingly, without pitching a camp, or waiting for the enemy’s army, they returned to Veii, taking with them the