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BOOK II.

Different

the story

drove them by force out of the town.

They drew

They drew up their gates. On the road

forces at a short distance from the to Gabii a battle was fought. The Romans conquered and not a Gaul escaped. Brennus himself fell into the hands of Camillus, and as he asked for mercy Camillus returned his haughty words, Woe to the conquered!' and slew him. Thus was Rome delivered from the Gauls, after they had remained in the town for seven months. The disgrace of the Roman overthrow was blotted out; the insolent enemy was punished, and by the heroism of one man the humiliating agreement was set aside whereby the Romans, in their despair, had ransomed themselves from their enemies with gold, unmindful that a Roman should purchase his freedom not with gold but with steel. The foregoing story, which, on the whole, is abridged versions of from the masterly narrative of Livy,' belongs to that class of narratives in which we can most easily detect the additions, ornaments, and poetical inventions of a later time, partly because they betray themselves by their fantastical features, partly because we find in Diodorus and Polybius much more simple and authentic accounts of the invasion of the Gauls, and with their assistance are enabled to recognise distinctly the event in its grand outlines. At the outset the story of the embassy of the three Fabii to the Gauls before Clusium is very improbable. It is not easy to understand why the people of Clusium should send to Rome for assistance, still less how the Romans could at that time employ a phrase which afterwards became popular among them, viz., that the Gauls should leave the friends and allies of the Roman people unmolested.' The vanity of the Fabian house and their family traditions are no doubt the source of the story that the Gauls

of the

Gallic

invasion.

1 Livy, v. 33-49.

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2 According to Livy (v. 35) they pleaded that they had remained neutral during the Veientine war. Sir G. C. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, ii. 341.

In the account of Diodorus (xiv. 113) the three Fabii were sent as ambassadors not to the Gauls, but to the Etruscans only, for the purpose of obtaining information.

remarked the three Romans in the Etruscan army,' and, on account of the violation of the law of nations, relinquished their attack on Etruria to advance straight upon Rome. From what we know of the Gauls of this time, they marched through Italy for the purpose of plundering, without scrupulously searching for just grounds to declare war on this or that nation. Thus they attacked Clusium, and for no other purpose they turned against Rome.'

CHAP.

XVIII.

The men who composed the eulogium of Camillus con- The dictatorship tributed most of the embellishments and falsifications of Camilof the story. The fictions are so clumsy and awkward lus. that they betray themselves immediately. At the same time we discover in them an author but little acquainted with Roman affairs and constitutional practice. The object of the narrator was to represent Camillus as the true deliverer of Rome. Hence the story of his recall from Ardea, and his nomination as dictator. In this story the fact is overlooked that, according to the previous account, Camillus was not sent into exile, but only condemned to pay a fine; that he voluntarily left Rome, and therefore had not lost the Roman citizenship, and that accordingly his recall required no vote of the people. The narrator, moreover, appears not to have known the forms observed on the nomination of a dictator. He causes him to be elected by a vote of the people, whereas the nomination ought to have been made by one of the consular tribunes. It cannot be conceived why this rule should have been departed from,

4

1 Livy, v. 36: Tantum eminebat peregrina (i.e. Romana) virtus.' The domestic annals of the Fabii seem to have furnished a considerable part of the story of the Gallic war. The chief pontiff, who prepared the old senators for a voluntary death, was a Fabius, probably the father of those three ambassadors (Livy, v. 41). Another Fabius (Q. Fabius Dorso) performs the wonderful exploit of walking from the Capitol to the Quirinal and back again unhurt, through the midst of the Gallic host, to perform a solemn family sacrifice (Livy, v. 46).

* Sir G. C. Lewis (Credibility of Early Roman History, ii. 341) remarks: The violation of the law of nations by Fabius the ambassador was an act more likely to strike the Romans than to offend the Gauls, who were little better than savages, and probably had scarcely any notion of the law of nations.'

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BOOK
II.

The

retreat of the Gauls.

seeing that, according to the received account, the consular tribune Q. Sulpicius Longus was on the Capitol, and could, at the request of the senate, easily nominate a dictator. The story therefore, creates a difficulty which, in reality, did not exist. On the other hand, it conceals or ignores an obstacle to the legal transfer of dictatorial power to Camillus. The law required that the dictator, after being duly nominated by a consul or consular tribune, should personally' propose to the comitia curiata the law (the lex curiata de imperio) which conferred on him the military command. Camillus could only do this if he was himself on the Capitol, for the curies could not assemble outside Rome. These are our reasons for doubting the dictatorship of Camillus. Moreover we possess an account which is free from the silly theatrical scenes in which Camillus suddenly appears, like a deus ex machinâ, in the Forum, and defeats and slays the Gauls. According to Diodorus, Camillus is not made dictator until the Gauls have evacuated Rome. We have therefore no alternative but to prefer this simple narrative, and to reject every word which connects Camillus with the deliverance of Rome from the Gauls.

In like manner we must condemn the story which ascribes to Camillus the honour of having taken from the Gauls the spoils and the ransom of a thousand pounds of gold. It is plain, from the report of Polybius, that neither Camillus nor any one else was so fortunate as to accomplish such a feat. Polybius reports that the Gauls retired unmolested with their booty." He does not even mention the ransom at all, so that perhaps even this story was invented for the same purpose of glorifying Camillus. It is indeed neither impossible nor improbable that the Gauls, after the destruction of the town, were induced to retire by a sum of

1 Cicero, De Rep, ii. 13, 17, 18, 20, 21. Livy, ix. 38, 39. Compare Becker, Röm. Alterth,, ii. part 1, p. 328.

2 Polybius, ii. 22 § 5 : γενόμενοι δὲ καὶ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων ἁπάντων ἐγκρατεῖς, καὶ τῆς πόλεως αὐτῆς ἑπτὰ μῆνας κυριεύσαντες, τέλος ἐθελοντὶ καὶ μετὰ χάριτος παραδόντες τὴν πόλιν, ἄθραυστοι καὶ ἀσινεῖς ἔχοντες τὴν ὠφέλειαν εἰς τὴν οἰκείαν ἐπανῆλθον.

money, but at any rate the Romans never recovered any portion of such ransom or of booty. According to the most popular story, adopted by Livy,' the payment was interrupted by Camillus on the Forum; the Gauls therefore never got the money at all. According to another report,2 it was taken from the Gauls, by Camillus, when they returned from an invasion of Apulia in the following year. According to a third version,3 it was brought back to Rome out of the province of Gaul by the proprætor M. Livius Drusus about a century later. The narrators thought it quite possible that a heap of gold should remain untouched in the hands of barbarians for a whole year or even for a century. To us such abstinence appears quite as marvellous as the suckling of Romulus and Remus by a she-wolf, and we decline to accept it as an historical fact. In comparison with it another version seems almost to deserve credit, though that also is rather startling. It is stated 4 that the sum of two thousand pounds of gold, after having been recovered from the Gauls, was deposited in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, and remained there untouched for more than two centuries, until in 55 B.C., in the second consulship of Pompeius, it was taken away by M. Crassus. If the Romans were able to lay aside such a handsome sum of money at the period of the great national distress which followed the burning of the city, and if they scrupled to touch it in the war with Hannibal, when they borrowed and took whatever money they could lay their hands on, we must confess that we have a very inadequate conception of the strength of their religious faith and conscientiousness. But we may fairly have grave doubts as to the accuracy of the statement. In the first place the sum paid as a ransom to the Gauls is all but unanimously

1 Livy, v. 49; xxii. 14. Plutarch, Camill., 29. Zonaras, vii. 23. Sir G. C. Lewis (Credibility of Early Roman History, ii. 346) says, 'This narrative, as it is given in Livy, resembles a scene in a melodrama, or a story in Ariosto, rather than an event in real history.'

2 Diodorus, xiv. 117.

Pliny, Hist. Nat., xxxiii. 5.

VOL. I.

3 Suetonius, Tiber., 3.

T

CHAP.

XVIII.

BOOK

II.

The story

and the

geese.

stated' to have amounted only to one thousand pounds of gold. If, therefore, it is true that, in 55 B.C., two thousand pounds were found, they must be otherwise accounted for.2 In the second place all the statements which refer to the raising, paying, and recovering the ransom are so contradictory and unauthenticated that we cannot believe that any trustworthy information existed on the subject.

The story of the saving of the Capitol by M. Manlius of the dogs and the cackling of the geese is in itself not incredible, and it may have been part of a very old tradition. It seems probable that while many of the great outlines of the history have been effaced, some of the minute details—such as the alarm given by the geese, the removal of the vestal virgins in the waggon of Albinius, and the sacrifice of Fabius-may have been faithfully preserved by tradition, or by the pontifical scribes.'3 At the same time even this part of the story is not free from objections. In the first place the tradition was by no means uniform that the Gauls had climbed up the rock, following the track of Livy, v. 48. Diodorus, xiv. 116. Valer. Max., v. 6, 8. Plutarch, Cam., 28. Zonaras, vii. 23. The statement that it amounted to 2,000 pounds, made by some writers (e.g. Varro, apud Non., p. 228), is an inference from the passage of Pliny, Hist. Nat., xxxiii. 5.

2 Pliny (loc. cit) supposes the second thousand pounds of gold were the spoils of the temples recovered from the Gauls. Livy (v. 50) says that a sum of money, saved from the various temples and deposited in the temple of Jupiter, was left there after the departure of the Gauls along with the ransom money, because it was found impossible to distinguish what belonged by rights to each temple. These are poor attempts at an explanation. It is evident that the ancients had no authentic information or knowledge of the origin of the alleged treasure of two thousand pounds of gold. Therefore, if we are disposed to admit its existence, Schwegler's conjecture (Röm. Gesch., iii. 267) is very plausible, that the gold for the ransom was taken from the Capitoline temple with the pledge of restoring it twofold, and that for the purpose of raising this sum of two thousand pounds of gold the tax (tributum) was laid on, which the people complained of so loudly. Schwegler points out how improbable it is that any such tax should have been imposed on the few defenders of the Capitol, and likewise that the women should have contributed towards it. His view, therefore is, that the Gauls retired on the payment of a ransom, that the gold for this ransom was taken from the temple of Jupiter, that the Gauls made off with it in safety, and that afterwards the Romans restored double the amount to the temple, where it remained till 55 B C. This view is consistent and, on the whole, supported by the evidence, such as it is.

Sir G. C. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, ii. 355.

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