The departure of the Gauls gave the Romans nothing within the city except the desolate scene of a conflagration: and at least on the left bank of the Tiber it can only have been by accident if any house in the country had escaped destruction. The Peloponnesians in their invasions of Attica left no house and no tree standing, wherever they marcht; and the Gauls were barbarians, beneath whose tread everything living perisht. Ostia may have held out: with regard to the small Latin towns incorporated in the Roman territory, it is no less improbable that the Gauls should have refrained from attacking any place where booty was to be won, than that such places should have been able to resist them. The greatest part of the citizens had been swept away: most of the men in the prime of life fell on the Alia: an enormous number, including women and children, who could not effect their escape, must have died by the sword or been carried into slavery by the conquerors. How is it possible to believe that the Tiber can have covered the territory of Veii, at least so long as the Gallic army kept together? and many of the fugitives must have been overtaken by destruction in the very heart of Latium.