1The battle line is drawn up, and the Veientine enemy and the Etruscan legions do not decline battle. 1They had an almost sure hope that the Romans would fight with them no more than they had fought with the Aequi; 1and that even some greater outrage was not to be despaired of, with tempers so provoked and the occasion so critical. 2The outcome was far otherwise; 2for never in any earlier war had the Romans entered battle more fiercely — so greatly had the enemy on one side with their insults, the consuls on the other with their delay, exasperated them. 3The Etruscans scarcely had room to deploy their ranks when, the javelins having been thrown away at random rather than aimed in the first confusion, the fight had already come to close quarters, to swords, where Mars is at his most savage.
4Among the foremost the Fabian clan was conspicuous, a spectacle and an example to their fellow citizens. 4Of these, Quintus Fabius — he had been consul two years before — as he led the way against the massed Veientes, was run through the chest with a sword by a Tuscan proud of his strength and skill in arms, while he moved heedlessly among many bands of the enemy; 4when the weapon was pulled out, Fabius fell headlong upon his wound. 5Both lines felt the fall of this one man, and the Romans were beginning to give way, when the consul Marcus Fabius leapt over the body as it lay, held his shield before it and said: 'Is this what you swore, soldiers, that you would return to camp in flight?
6Do you fear the most cowardly of enemies so much more than Jupiter and Mars, by whom you swore? 6But I, who took no oath, will either return victorious or fall fighting here beside you, Quintus Fabius.' 6Then Kaeso Fabius, consul of the year before, said to the consul: 'Do you think, brother, that with those words you will get them to fight? 6The gods by whom they swore will get them to; 7let us too, as befits nobles, as is worthy of the Fabian name, kindle the soldiers' spirits by fighting rather than by exhorting!' 7So the two Fabii fly forward to the front with levelled spears, and carried the whole line with them.