Picture an ocean rolling, waves ebbing and flowing, now flooding onto the shore, smashing over the cliffs in a burst of foam and drenching the bay’s sandy edge— now rushing in fast retreat, swallowing down the scree lost in the backwash, leaving the shallows high and dry: so twice the Etruscans hurled the Latins toward their walls, twice routed, glancing round they cover their backs with shields. But when at the third assault the whole front locked fast, fighting hand-to-hand, and each man picked out his man, then, truly, the groans of the dying men break loose, 750 weapons, bodies, a sea of
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