Fortune Blinds the Minds of Men when she Does not Want them to Oppose Her Designs

If we consider well how human affairs proceed, many times many events will be seen to arise and accidents happen against which the Heavens have not entirely desired that they should be provided. And if this of which I speak happened at Rome where there was so much virtu, so much religion, and so much order, it is no wonder that it should happen much more often in a City or a Province which lacks the above mentioned attributes. And as this case in point is most remarkable in demonstrating the power of Heaven over human affairs, T. Livius relates it at length and in the most effective language, saying that Heaven, wanting some means to have the Romans know its power, first made those Fabii err who had gone as ambassadors to the Gauls, and through whose deeds excited them to make war against Rome: Afterward it ordained that, to reprimand them for that war, nothing should be done in Rome worthy of the Roman people, having first ordained that Camillus, who alone could be the remedy for so much evil, was sent into exile at Ardea; afterwards when the Gauls were approaching Rome, those people who had many times before created a Dictator in order to check the attacks of the Volscians and other neighboring enemies, did not create one when the Gauls came. Also they were slow and without extraordinary diligence in making their selection of soldiers, and were so slow in taking up arms, that only with great effort were they in time to meet the Gauls on the river Allia, ten miles distant from Rome. Here the Tribunes established their camp without any of the customary diligence, without first examining the place, not circumscribing it with ditches and palisades, and not using any human or divine remedy. And in the order of battle, they made the ranks open and weak, so that neither the soldiers nor the Captains did anything worthy of the Roman discipline. They fought them without any bloodshed, for they fled before they had been assaulted; and the greater part went off to Veii, the remainder retreated to Rome, where they entered the Capitol without entering even their own homes; so that the Senate with no thought of defending Rome (any more than the others) did not close its gates, [and] a part of them fled, another part entered the Capitol with the others. In defending it [the Capitol], however, they did employ some non-tumultuous methods, for they did not burden it with useless people, they supplied it with all the grain they could so as to be able to endure a siege, and of the useless crowd of old men and women and children, the greater part fled to the surrounding towns, the rest remained in Rome a prey to the Gauls. So that whoever ha............