Plutarch's Life of the Roman commander who never held the consulship yet was dictator five times, credited with saving Rome from the Gauls and hailed as its 'second founder.'
Plutarch's Camillus tells the story of Marcus Furius Camillus, a Roman general active in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE who rose through repeated dictatorships and military tribunates rather than the consulship, which he refused to seek against the people's will. The Life opens with his siege of the Etruscan city of Veii, marked by the strange omen of the swelling Alban Lake and Camillus's clever use of a captured schoolteacher's treachery at Falerii to win a bloodless surrender through justice rather than force. Despite these successes, Camillus is prosecuted on a charge of misappropriating spoils, condemned in absentia, and goes into bitter exile, cursing his ungrateful city as he leaves.
The narrative's center of gravity shifts to catastrophe: the Gauls under their king Brennus, provoked by a diplomatic outrage committed by Roman envoys, march on Rome, crush its army, and sack the city itself, sparing only the defenders holding out on the Capitoline Hill. Plutarch renders the fall of Rome vividly, from the silent, dignified senators awaiting death in their ivory chairs to Brennus's famous gesture of throwing his sword onto the scales of a fraudulent ransom payment and declaring, 'What else, but grief for the conquered?' Recalled from exile and made dictator, Camillus arrives just in time to reject the ransom, rout the Gauls, and rebuild Rome, later reconciling patricians and plebeians and building a temple to Concord before dying, honored, during a plague.
The Life matters historically both for what it reports and for how it reports it: it is a foundational ancient account of the Gallic sack of Rome (traditionally dated to 390 BCE) and of the constitutional struggle between patricians and plebeians over access to the consulship, and it shows Plutarch weighing the reliability of his own sources -- checking Roman tradition against the Greek historian Heraclides of Pontus and the philosopher Aristotle, and finding both partly mistaken about who actually saved the city.
“Of the many great things said about Furius Camillus, one seems especially distinctive and remarkable: that although he achieved the most and the greatest successes in commands, was chosen dictator five times, celebrated four triumphs, and is recorded as the second founder of Rome, he never once held the consulship.”
— Camillus
“the children brought the teacher forward, naked and bound, abusing him, while calling Camillus their savior and father and god”
— Camillus
“The Clusians wrong us, being able to till only a little land, yet claiming to hold much, and not sharing it with us, who are strangers, many, and poor.”
— Camillus
“When Sulpicius asked, "What is this?" "What else," he said, "but grief for the conquered?" This has already become a proverbial saying.”
— Camillus
“it was the ancestral custom of the Romans to save their fatherland with iron, not with gold”
— Camillus
Plutarch explains that Camillus refused to seek the consulship against the will of the people, who at that time were in a standoff with the senate and preferred to elect military tribunes with consular power instead of consuls. Camillus nonetheless held effective command through five dictatorships, so his exclusion from the office was a matter of political tact, not lack of ambition or capability.
After his long siege and negotiated surrender of Falerii, soldiers who had expected to plunder the city instead came home empty-handed and turned on him. A tribune named Lucius Apuleius then accused him of stealing bronze doors from the spoils of Veii; facing near-certain conviction and unwilling to let his friends merely pay his fine, Camillus chose exile rather than trial, cursing the city on his way out.
Under their king Brennus, the Gauls destroyed a Roman army provoked by a diplomatic breach committed by Roman envoys at Clusium, then marched unopposed into Rome, which the Romans could not defend. The elderly senators sat in ceremonial dress awaiting death in the forum, and the Gauls plundered and burned the city for days while a garrison held out on the Capitoline Hill.
It comes from this Life: as the Romans tried to ransom their city, the Gauls fraudulently weighted the scales, and when the tribune Sulpicius objected, Brennus threw his own sword onto the weights and said, as Plutarch renders it, 'What else, but grief for the conquered?' Plutarch notes the line had already become proverbial in his own day.
Recalled from exile and made dictator, Camillus arrived at the ransom negotiation just as the gold was being weighed out, seized the gold back, and declared that Rome would be saved by iron rather than gold. He then led his forces against the Gauls and defeated them, after which he rebuilt the city's political order and is remembered as Rome's second founder.
Yes. He notes that the Greek writer Heraclides of Pontus reported only a garbled rumor of Rome's fall, dressing it up with talk of Hyperboreans and a boundless sea, and that Aristotle knew the Celts had taken the city but wrongly named the rescuer 'Lucius' instead of Marcus Camillus -- Plutarch flags both as unreliable at the edges.
During the siege of Veii, the Alban Lake -- which had no outside source or outlet -- inexplicably swelled and rose without rain, eventually bursting its banks and flooding the plain below. Both Romans and the besieged Veientines took it as a portentous sign, and a captured diviner's interpretation of it fed directly into how the siege was ultimately resolved.
After reconciling patricians and plebeians over consular elections and dedicating a shrine to Concord as he had vowed, Camillus died the following year during a severe plague that struck Rome, dying of old age in the fullness of his life even as the epidemic killed enormous numbers of ordinary citizens and magistrates around him.
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