is highly unlikely. Berresford Ellis rightly points out that his figure of 12,000 would have been quite large for a single tribe. The Roman army was led by the tribune Quintus Sulpicius Longus. Battle There are only two ancient accounts that provide details of the battle. One is by Livy, and the other is by Diodorus Siculus. According to Livy, no special measures were taken in Rome, and the levy "was not larger than had been usual in ordinary campaigns." The Gauls marched on Rome so quickly that "Rome was thunderstruck by the swiftness at which they moved, which is shown both by the haste in mustering the army as if it were meeting a spur-of-the-moment emergency and the difficulty in getting any further than the eleventh milestone." The Romans presumably were outnumbered. They did not set up camp or build a defensive rampart and they did not divine the gods, as they were supposed to. They extended the wings to avoid being outflanked, but that made their line so thin and weakened that the centre could hardly be kept together. They placed the reserves on a hill on the right. Brennus, the Senone chieftain, suspected that to be a ruse and that the reservists would attack him from the rear while he was fighting the Roman army in the plain. He, therefore, attacked the hill. The Romans panicked. The left-wing threw their arms down and fled to the bank of the River Tiber. The Gauls killed the soldiers who were blocking one another's path in the disorderly flight. Those who could not swim or were weak were weighed down by their armour and drowned. Still, the majority of these men reached Veii, an Etruscan city that had recently been conquered by Rome and was near the other bank. They did not even send a messenger to warn Rome. The right-wing, further from the river and closer to the hill, fled to Rome. The Gauls were surprised at how easy their victory had been. The ancient Greek historian Diodorus Siculus said the Romans marched and crossed the River Tiber. He is the only ancient historian who placed the battle on the right bank of the river. The Romans lined up their best troops, 24,000 men, in the plain and placed the weakest troops on the hill. The Celts also lined up, placed their best men on the hill, and easily