The most famous legend of the Fabii asserts that, following the last of the seven consecutive consulships in 479 BC, the gens undertook the war with Veii as a private obligation. A militia consisting of over three hundred men of the gens, together with their friends and clients, amounting to a total of some four thousand men, took up arms and stationed itself on a hill overlooking the Cremera, a little river between Rome and Veii. The cause of this secession is said to have been the enmity between the Fabii and the patricians, who regarded them as traitors for advocating the causes of the plebeians. The Fabian militia remained in their camp on the Cremera for two years, successfully opposing the Veientes, until at last they were lured into an ambush, and destroyed. Three hundred and six Fabii of fighting age were said to have perished in the disaster, leaving only a single survivor to return home. By some accounts he was the only survivor of the entire gens; but it seems unlikely that the camp of the Fabii included not only all of the men, but the women and children of the family as well. They and the elders of the gens probably remained at Rome. The day on which the Fabii perished was forever remembered, as it was the same day that the Gauls defeated the Roman army at the Battle of the Allia in 390 BC. This was the fifteenth day before the kalends of Sextilis, or July 18, according to the modern calendar. The story was considerably embellished at a later date in order to present it as a counterpart of the Battle of Thermopylae, which took place in 479 BC (hence the number of 306 Fabii, similar to the 300 Spartans of Leonidas). However, Tim Cornell states that there is no reason to doubt the historicity of the battle, because the "tribus Fabia"—presumably where the Fabii had their country estates—was located near the Cremera, on the border with Veii.