Book 1
10.92
Carbo sent Damasippus in haste with two other legions to Praeneste to relieve Marius, who was still besieged, but not even these could force their way through the pass that was guarded by Sulla. The Gauls who inhabited the country lying between Ravenna and the Alps went over to Metellus en masse and Lucullus won a victory over another body of Carbo’s forces near Placentia. When Carbo learned these facts, although he still had 30,000 men around Clusium, and the two legions of Damasippus, and others under Carinas and Marcius, besides a large force of Samnites, who were courageously enduring hardships at the pass, he fell into despair and weakly fled to Africa with his friends, although he was still consul, in order to make a stand there instead of in Italy. Of those whom he left behind, the army around Clusium had a battle with Pompey in which they lost 20,000. Naturally, after this greatest disaster of all, the remainder of the army dissolved in fragments and each man went to his own home. Carinas, Marcius, and Damasippus went with all the forces they had to the pass in order to force their way through it in conjunction with the Samnites. Failing in the attempt, they marched to Rome, thinking that the city might be easily taken, as it was bereft of men and provisions, and they encamped in the Alban territory at a distance of 100 stades from it.
