Camillus

Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the original language

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.

The cause of this was the condition of the state at that time: as a result of the quarrel between the people and the senate, the people contended not to have consuls appointed, but instead elected military tribunes to the command; and although these men did everything with the authority and power of consuls, their office was less oppressive because of their number — for having six men, and not two, placed over affairs eased the burden for those who resented the oligarchy.

It was at just such a moment, when he was at the height of his reputation and influence, that Camillus did not think it right to become consul against the people's will, even though during this period the constitution had often admitted consular elections; but in the many and varied other commands he held, he showed himself such a man that, while the authority even of sole command was shared in common, the glory belonged to him alone even when he served as general along with others — the one due to the moderation with which he ruled without arousing envy, the other to the good sense by which he plainly held the first place.

Since there was not yet great distinction attached to the house of the Furii, he was the first of his own line to advance to fame, distinguishing himself when the Romans fought a massive engagement against Aequian and Volscian forces, serving under the dictator Postumius Tubertus. Riding ahead of the army and being struck by a wound in the thigh, he did not give way, but pressing on with the missile still lodged in the wound, and grappling with the bravest of the enemy, he turned them to flight.

For this he received other honors as well and was appointed censor, an office that carried great dignity in those times. It is recorded of him as censor that he did a fine thing: persuading the unmarried men by argument and threatening them with penalties, he joined them to widowed women — of whom there were many because of the wars — and it was also necessary to make the orphans liable to taxation, whereas before they had been exempt,

the cause being the continual campaigns, which required great expenditures, and especially pressing was the siege of Veii (some call these people Veientines). The city was the show-piece of Etruria, not inferior to Rome in the number of its weapons and the multitude of its soldiers, but exulting in wealth and luxury of life and extravagance, and it fought many fine contests for glory and dominion in its war against the Romans.

But at that time it had abandoned its ambitions, having been broken in great battles; and having thrown up great and strong walls and filled the city with weapons, missiles, grain, and every kind of supply, they endured the siege without fear — a long siege, one that wore down the attackers with just as much toil and hardship as it did the defenders.

For being accustomed to campaign abroad for not a long time, in the summer season, and to spend the winter at home, they were then for the first time compelled by the military tribunes, after building forts and fortifying the camp, to join winter and summer together in enemy territory, the war already nearly ending its seventh year. As a result the commanders were blamed and, seeming to prosecute the siege feebly, were removed from office, and new men were selected to carry on the war; among them was Camillus, now holding the military tribunate for a second term,

and he did nothing concerning the siege itself in that period, having been assigned to make war on the Faliscans and Capenates, peoples who had seized on the general confusion to lay waste the countryside extensively and stir up trouble throughout the entire Etruscan conflict; Camillus pressed them hard and drove them back behind their walls, inflicting heavy losses.

After this, the disaster concerning the Alban Lake, which occurred while the war was at its height, was no less than the incredible marvels to inquire into, on account of the absence of any common explanation, and it caused fear even though it had a rational origin. For it was autumn, and the summer was ending, one that had not been rainy nor troubled by south winds,

which had manifestly become severe; and though Italy has many lakes and rivers and streams of every kind, some of these failed altogether, while others held out only meagerly and with difficulty, and all the rivers, as always low and shallow through the summer, ran on. But the Alban Lake, having its beginning and its end within itself, enclosed by fertile mountains, for no apparent cause — unless it was something divine — visibly swelled and rose up, pressing against the foothills and reaching level with the highest ridges, rising up without surge or wave.

And at first it was a wonder to the shepherds and herdsmen; but when the sort of isthmus that separated the lake from the country below burst open under the weight and volume of the water, a great flood ran down through the plowed and planted lands to the sea, and it caused astonishment not only to the Romans themselves, but seemed to all the inhabitants of Italy to be the sign of no small thing. And there was the greatest talk of it in the camp besieging Veii, so that this news of the disaster concerning the lake reached even the enemy.

As happens in a siege prolonged over time, which brings many exchanges and conversations with the enemy, a certain Roman had struck up an acquaintance and grown open in conversation with a citizen of Veii — a man versed in the old oracles and reputed to have more insight than most through his skill at divination. This Roman, when he heard of the rising of the lake, and saw the man exulting greatly and laughing at the siege, said that this was not the only marvel the present time had brought, but that other signs stranger than these had occurred for the Romans, concerning which he wished to share with him, in case, by conferring, he might be able to arrange his own affairs better while the common affairs were in trouble.

When the man eagerly agreed and gave himself over to the conversation, expecting to be a listener to certain secrets, the Roman, talking with him little by little and leading him on, once they had gotten farther from the gates, lifted him up bodily, being the stronger, and with the help of some who ran up from the camp, overpowered him and delivered him, held fast, to the generals.

The man, now under compulsion, and learning that what was fated could not be escaped, revealed secret oracles concerning his own homeland: that it could not be captured before the Alban Lake, once it had overflowed and was running along other channels, was pushed back by the enemy and diverted, so that they prevented it from mingling with the sea.

When the senate heard this and was in perplexity, it seemed best to send to Delphi to consult the god. The men sent on this errand were men of note and standing — Cossus Licinius, Valerius Potitus, and Fabius Ambustus — and after making the crossing and receiving the god's responses, they returned home carrying additional oracles as well, which told them of a neglect of certain ancestral rites concerning the festival called the Latin festival,

and they ordered that the water of the Alban Lake, so far as possible, be shut off and driven back into its ancient channel; or, if that could not be done, that it be diverted by ditches and trenches into the plain and consumed there. When this was reported, the priests set about the sacrifices, and the people went to the work and diverted the water.

By the war's tenth year the senate set aside the other offices and named Camillus dictator; he then picked Cornelius Scipio to serve as his master of horse, and before anything else vowed to the gods that, should the war come to a triumphant end, he would celebrate the great games and dedicate a shrine to the deity known among the Romans as Mater Matuta.

One might judge from the rites performed that this goddess is most nearly Leucothea; for they bring a servant-girl into the shrine and strike her, then drive her out, and embrace the children of their sisters before their own, and perform in the sacrifice acts resembling those of the nurses of Dionysus and the sufferings of Ino on account of the concubine. Once the vows were made, Camillus marched into Faliscan territory and, in a decisive engagement, crushed both them and the Capenates who had come to their assistance.

Then, turning his attention back to Veii under siege, he judged a frontal assault too costly and difficult, so he cut tunnels, the ground around the city yielding to the digging and allowing the works to be carried down to a depth unknown to the enemy. So, as the hope of success advanced, he himself made assaults from outside, drawing the enemy up onto the walls, while others, advancing unseen through the tunnels, made their way inside the citadel undetected, at the temple of Hera, which was the largest in the city and held in the greatest honor.

There, it is said, the leader of the Etruscans happened at that very moment to be at the sacrifices, and the seer, looking into the entrails and crying out loudly, said that the god gives victory to whoever follows up on those sacred rites; and the Romans in the tunnels, hearing this cry, quickly broke through the floor, and with a shout and the clash of arms, emerged, while the enemy, terrified, fled; and seizing the entrails, they carried them to Camillus.

But this may seem perhaps to resemble legend. Once the city fell to the assault and Roman soldiers were hauling off and herding away immense riches, Camillus, watching from the citadel what was happening, first stood and wept, then, being called blessed by those present, raised his hands to the gods and, praying, said:

"Zeus, greatest, and gods who oversee good and wicked deeds, you yourselves surely know that the Romans, not against justice, but of necessity in self-defense, have moved against a hostile city that respects no law. Yet if," he said, "some payment is owed in exchange for our present good fortune, I pray it fall on me alone, at the smallest possible cost, rather than upon Rome's people and her army."

Having said this, and turning to the right as is the Roman custom for those who have prayed and made obeisance, he stumbled as he turned; and while those present were thrown into confusion, recovering himself from the fall, he said that this small mishap had come to him in accordance with his prayer, in exchange for the greatest good fortune.

Having sacked the city, he resolved to move the statue of Hera to Rome, just as he had vowed. And when the craftsmen had gathered for this purpose, he sacrificed and prayed to the goddess to accept their eagerness and to become a favorable co-dweller with the gods allotted to Rome; and the statue, they say, uttered in reply that it both wished this and consented to it.

Livy, however, says that Camillus prayed, laying his hand on the goddess, and made his appeal, and that some of those present answered that she both wished it and would follow, and would follow gladly. Those who insist on this and defend the marvel have as their strongest advocate the fortune of the city, which advanced from a small and despised beginning to such a height of glory and power that it is unthinkable it did so without a god present at each turn with many great manifestations,

and moreover they gather together kindred instances — statues that have often poured out sweat, and groans that have been heard, and turnings away and closings of the eyes of images, which not a few earlier writers have recorded. And we too have heard many things worthy of wonder from men of our own time, which no one should carelessly dismiss.

But in such matters both believing too readily and disbelieving too much are perilous, on account of human weakness, which has no bound and does not master itself, but is carried away, in one direction into superstition and delusion, in another into contempt and disregard of the gods; and caution, and nothing in excess, is best.

Camillus, either because of the greatness of the achievement — having in the tenth year of the siege destroyed a city that rivaled Rome — or, being puffed up by those who called him blessed into a swelling pride and a temper more oppressive than lawful and civic authority allows, celebrated his triumph with excessive pomp, and among other things, having yoked a four-horse chariot with white horses, mounted it and drove through Rome, something no commander had done before or since; for such a chariot was held sacred, set apart for the god who reigns as king and father over all the others.

As a result of this he fell into disfavor with the citizens, who were not accustomed to such indulgence; and he incurred a second charge by opposing a law that would divide the city. For the tribunes of the people proposed that the people and the senate be divided into two equal parts, and that some remain there while others, chosen by lot, move to the captured city, on the grounds that they would be better off, and that with two great and fine cities together they would guard both the territory and the rest of their prosperity.

Now the people, having already grown numerous and being poor, gladly welcomed the proposal, and there was continual uproar around the speaker's platform demanding the vote; but the senate and the strongest of the other citizens, thinking that the tribunes were proposing not a division but a destruction of Rome, and being greatly displeased, took refuge with Camillus.

And he, dreading the contest, kept casting excuses and distractions before the people, by which he continually blocked the law. For this reason he was resented. But the most open and greatest of the hostilities toward him from the people arose from the matter of the tenth part of the spoils — not unreasonable, even if not entirely just, given that the many had taken the lead in the matter,

For it seems that when he was marching against Veii he made a vow: should the city fall to him, he would set apart a tenth portion of the spoils for the god. But when the city was taken and plundered, either because he shrank from troubling the citizens or because some forgetfulness of the vow overtook him amid the pressing business at hand, he let them keep the benefit of it unpaid. Later, when some time had passed and he had already given up that command, he laid the affair before the senators, and the seers announced that signs at the sacrifices revealed the wrath of the gods, demanding propitiation and thank-offerings.

When the senate voted that the benefit itself — for it was difficult for it not to be redistributed — but that those who had received it should bring forward a tenth part under oath, many painful and violent things happened to the soldiers, men who were poor and had toiled much, being compelled to contribute so great a portion of what they had acquired and already spent,

and Camillus, troubled by them and at a loss for a better excuse, happened to take refuge in the most absurd of arguments, admitting that he had forgotten the vow; and they grew angry, that he who had vowed to tithe the possessions of the enemy was now tithing the possessions of the citizens. Nevertheless, once all had contributed as much as was required, it was resolved to have a golden bowl made and sent to Delphi.

There was a shortage of gold in the city, and while the magistrates were considering from where it might be procured, the women themselves, deliberating among themselves, gave up the gold ornaments they each wore on their bodies for the dedication, which came to eight talents' weight of gold; and to these women the senate, rendering them fitting honor, voted that after death, just as in the case of men, fitting praise should be spoken also over women — for it had not previously been the custom for a woman to be publicly eulogized upon her death.

Having chosen three men from among the best as sacred envoys, and having fitted out a warship with a well-manned crew and festal adornment, they sent it off. But it happened that both storm and calm at sea proved troublesome, so that those men, having come within a hair's breadth of perishing then, unexpectedly escaped danger again afterward. For triremes of the Liparaeans sailed against them near the islands of Aeolus, the wind having failed, taking them for pirates.

When the envoys begged and stretched out their hands in supplication, the Liparaeans held off from ramming them, but they towed the ship in and put it up for public sale as booty, both the goods and the persons, having judged them to be pirates. Only with difficulty, persuaded by the virtue and influence of one man, Timesitheus their general, did they release them. And he, having also towed their vessels alongside with his own, escorted them and joined in consecrating the offering; for which he received such honors in Rome as were fitting.

When the tribunes of the people again stirred up the law concerning the resettlement, the war against the Falisci, appearing opportunely, gave the leading men the chance to hold the election of magistrates according to their own judgment and to appoint Camillus, along with five others, as military tribune, on the ground that affairs required a leader who possessed both reputation and glory together with experience,

and when the people had voted, Camillus took command and invaded the territory of the Falisci; and he laid siege to Falerii, a well-fortified city equipped in every way for war, thinking that to take it was no small task nor one of a moment, but wishing rather to wear down the citizens and keep them occupied, so that they would not have leisure to sit at home being led astray by demagogues and falling into faction. For they continually and fittingly made use of this remedy, like physicians, turning the turbulent disorders of the state outward.

So confident were the people of Falerii in the siege, trusting that they were fortified on every side, that except for those guarding the walls, the rest went about the city in their ordinary clothes, and their children continued attending their schools and walking and exercising near the walls under the guidance of their teacher. For the Falerians, like the Greeks, made use of a single common teacher, wishing their children to be raised and to flock together with one

another from the very beginning. This teacher, then, plotting against the Falerians by means of the children, led them out each day near the wall at first, then brought them back inside again after their exercise; and from this, leading them out little by little, he accustomed them to feel confident, as though there were great safety, and finally, having gathered them all together, he threw them in among the Roman outposts and handed them over, bidding that they be led to Camillus.

Having been led and set in the midst, he said that he was a trainer and teacher, but that in place of these just duties he had chosen favor with Camillus instead, and had come delivering the city to him through the persons of its own children. The deed, on hearing it, appeared monstrous to Camillus; and turning to those present he said that war is indeed a harsh thing and is carried through by much injustice and violent deeds,

yet even in war there are certain laws for good men, and victory is not to be pursued so far that one does not shun the favors that come from wicked and impious deeds — for the great general ought to wage war relying on his own virtue, not on another's baseness — and he ordered his attendants to tear the man's garments and bind his hands behind his back, and to give the children rods and whips, so that in punishing the traitor they might drive him back into the city.

And just as the Falerians had learned of their teacher's treachery, and while the city, as was natural, was gripped by mourning over so great a calamity, with men and women alike rushing to the walls and gates without any reckoning, the children brought the teacher forward, naked and bound, abusing him, while calling Camillus their savior and father and god,

so that not only the parents of the children but the other citizens as well, seeing these things, were struck with wonder and longing for the justice of Camillus. And gathering in assembly they sent envoys to him, entrusting their own affairs to him, and Camillus sent these men on to Rome.

Standing before the senate they said that the Romans, by valuing justice more highly than conquest, had made them prefer defeat to their own liberty, not because they thought themselves so far inferior in power, but because they confessed themselves defeated in virtue. And when the senate again gave over to him the decision and arbitration of the matter, he took money from the Falerians and, having established friendship with all the Falisci, withdrew.

But the soldiers, who had expected to plunder the Falerians, when they returned to Rome empty-handed, accused Camillus before the other citizens of hating the common people and of begrudging the poor any benefit. And when the tribunes again put forward the resettlement law and called the people to vote, Camillus, sparing neither hostility nor free speech, appeared more than anyone to be pressing the majority hard, and they unwillingly voted the law down,

but they held Camillus in anger, so that even when misfortune befell him in his own household — for he lost one of his sons to illness — they did not in the least relax their anger out of pity. And yet he bore the affliction not moderately, being a man gentle and good by nature, but though the trial against him had already been posted, he kept to his house through grief, shut up with the women.

Now Lucius Apuleius brought the accusation against him, the charge being theft concerning the Tyrrhenian money, and indeed certain bronze doors were said to have appeared in his possession among the captured spoils; and the people were inflamed and it was plain that they would use any pretext whatsoever to vote against him.

So then, having gathered together his friends and those who had campaigned with him, who were not few in number, he begged them not to let him be unjustly convicted on wicked charges and made a laughingstock by his enemies. But when his friends, after deliberating and conferring among themselves, answered that they did not think they could help him regarding the verdict, but that they would help pay the fine if he were convicted, he could not bear it and resolved to depart and flee the city in anger.

So, having embraced his wife and son at his house, he went forward in silence to the gate; there he stopped, and turning around and stretching out his hands toward the Capitol, he prayed to the gods that, if he were being driven out unjustly — through the insolence and envy of the people rather than justly — the Romans would quickly repent and become manifest to all men as needing and longing for Camillus.

He, then, like Achilles, having laid curses upon his fellow citizens, went into exile and was condemned by default, at an assessment of fifteen thousand asses. Reckoned in silver, this amounts to fifteen hundred drachmas; the as, that is, being the silver coin, while the piece equal to ten of the copper coins bore the name denarius.

Every Roman is convinced that Justice swiftly took up the curses Camillus had uttered, and that the price exacted for the wrong done him proved not sweet but bitter, and famous and much talked of: so great a nemesis went round about Rome, and so great a season of ruin and danger together with disgrace appeared upon the city, whether it came about so by chance, or whether it is indeed the work of some god not to neglect virtue when it is treated with ingratitude.

First, then, it seemed that a sign had occurred of a great evil approaching, in the death of Julius the censor; for the Romans especially revere and consider sacred the office of the censors. Second, before Camillus's exile, a man not distinguished nor of the senate, but held to be decent and good, Marcus Caedicius, reported to the military tribunes a matter worthy of concern.

For he said that, walking the previous night along the street they call the New Way, he was called by someone who spoke and turned around, and though he saw no one, he heard a voice greater than human speaking these words: "Come, Marcus Caedicius, go and tell the magistrates at dawn to expect the Gauls in a short time." The military tribunes, hearing this, made it a matter for laughter and jest. And shortly after, the events concerning Camillus occurred.

The Gauls, being of the Celtic race, are said, on account of their numbers, to have left their own land, which was not sufficient to support them all, and to have set out in search of another; and having become many tens of thousands of young fighting men, and leading with them still more children and women, some crossed over toward the northern Ocean beyond the Rhipaean mountains and occupied the farthest parts of Europe,

while others, settling in the region between the Pyrenees and the Alps, close by the Senones and Celtorii, dwelt there for a long time; but late in time, tasting wine for the first time when it was brought over from Italy, they were all so amazed at the drink and so driven out of their senses by the novelty of the pleasure, that they took up arms and, gathering their families, made for the Alps and sought that land which yielded such fruit, considering all other land barren and uncivilized.

The man who first introduced wine to them and most incited them toward Italy is said to have been Arruns, a Tyrrhenian, a man of distinction and by nature not wicked, but who fell into such an unhappy affair. He served as guardian to a fatherless boy named Lucumo, foremost of the citizens in wealth and admired for his beauty. This youth from childhood lived in Arruns's household, and even as a young man did not leave the house, but pretended to enjoy his company.

And for a long time it went unnoticed that he had seduced Arruns's wife and been seduced by her in turn; but when the passion of both had already gone far and they could neither give up their desire nor conceal it any longer, the young man attempted to openly seize the woman and keep her, while the husband, going to law and being overpowered by the multitude of friends and lavish expenditure of Lucumo, abandoned his own case; and learning of the Gauls' situation, he went to them and led the way for their expedition into Italy.

And they, invading, at once took control of as much of the land as the Tyrrhenians had once possessed, stretching from the Alps to both seas, as even the name testifies in support of the account; for they call the northern sea Adria, from the Tyrrhenian city of Adria, while the sea inclining toward the south, opposite it, they call the Tyrrhenian sea,

and this whole land is planted with trees and good for pasturing cattle and well watered by rivers. And it had eighteen cities, fine and large and equipped both industriously for commerce and lavishly for daily living, which the Gauls, having driven out the Tyrrhenians, themselves took over. But these things had happened a considerable time before.

The Gauls at that time marched against the Tyrrhenian city of Clusium and laid siege to it, and the people of Clusium, taking refuge with the Romans, asked them for envoys and letters to the barbarians. Three men of the Fabian family were sent, men of good repute and holding great honors in the city.

The Gauls received these men kindly, on account of the name of Rome, and ceasing from their assault on the walls, came to talk with them. And when the envoys inquired what wrong the Clusians had done them to bring them marching upon their city, the Gallic king Brennus laughed and said: "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."

"These same wrongs, Romans, were done to you as well—formerly by the Albans and the people of Fidenae and Ardea, and today it is the Veientes, the Capenates, and no small number among the Faliscans and Volscians who do likewise. Against these you march, and if they do not share their goods with you, you enslave them and plunder and raze their cities—doing nothing terrible or unjust in this,

but rather following the oldest of laws, which gives the possessions of the weaker to the stronger, beginning with the god and ending with the beasts; for even in these it is by nature implanted to seek to have more, the stronger over the weaker. So stop pitying the Clusians under siege, lest you teach the Gauls too to become kind and compassionate toward those wronged by the Romans."

From these words the Romans recognized that Brennus was implacable, and going into Clusium they encouraged and urged the men to sally out against the barbarians together with them, wanting either to learn the strength of the enemy or to display their own. When the Clusians sallied out and a fight broke out close under the walls, a member of the Fabian house, Quintus Ambustus, mounted on horseback, rode against a tall, striking Gaul who had pressed far ahead of his own line, and was not recognized at once, since the clash happened in a flash and his flashing armor masked who he was.

When he had prevailed in the fight and, having thrown the man down, was stripping his armor, Brennus recognized him and called the gods to witness that, contrary to the customs and laws held sacred and just among all men, a man who had come as an envoy had committed an act of war. He at once broke off the battle, and letting the Clusians be, he led his army against Rome. But not wishing it to appear that this wrong had come to them as something welcome, something they had wanted as a pretext, he sent to demand the man for punishment, and meanwhile advanced slowly.

When the senate had assembled in Rome, many others accused Fabius, and among the priests those called the Fetiales pressed the matter urgently, demanding and insisting that the senate turn the pollution of what had been done onto the one man responsible, and so absolve the rest. These Fetiales had been established by Numa Pompilius, the gentlest and most just of kings, as guardians of peace and as judges and guarantors of the causes that justly bring on war.

When the case went before the senate and from there was passed on to the people, and the priests continued to bring their charge against Fabius, the populace treated the sacred business with such mockery and disdain that they went so far as to elect Fabius military tribune together with his brothers. On hearing this, the Celts were angered and pressed their advance without delay, but

pressed forward with all speed. And though those in between were terrified by their numbers and the brilliance of their equipment and their violence and fury, and thought that the whole countryside was already lost and that the cities would be destroyed at once, contrary to expectation they did no wrong and took nothing from the fields, but as they passed near the cities they shouted that they were marching on Rome and were at war only with the Romans, and that they regarded everyone else as friends.

While the barbarians came on with such an onrush, the military tribunes led the Romans out to battle—not deficient in numbers, for their heavy infantry were no fewer than forty thousand, but most of them untrained and handling weapons for the first time. Moreover the rites of the gods had been neglected by them, since they had neither made sacrifices with good omens nor consulted the seers, as one would expect before danger and battle.

No less than anything else, the plurality of commanders threw their conduct into confusion. Yet earlier, even for lesser contests, they had often chosen a single ruler, whom they call dictator, well aware how great an advantage it is in a perilous moment to act on one judgment when unaccountable power holds authority firmly in hand.

Not least did the ill treatment of Camillus damage their affairs, since the man who would have been feared, one who ruled neither to please nor to flatter, was gone. So advancing ninety stadia from the city, they camped beside the river Allia, not far from where it joins the Tiber near their camp. There, when the barbarians appeared, they fought disgracefully and, through lack of order, were routed.

The left wing the Celts at once drove into the river and destroyed; the right, swerving away from the onslaught from the plain toward the hills, was cut down less severely, and most of them from there escaped into the city, while the rest, as many as survived the slaughter after the enemy gave up the pursuit, fled by night to Veii, believing that Rome was gone and that everyone there had perished.

The battle occurred after the summer solstice, near the full moon—on the same day on which, in an earlier year, the great disaster of the Fabii had occurred: three hundred men of that house were killed by the Etruscans. And from this second defeat the day has been called Alliensis, after the river, down to the present. As for whether some days should be considered unlucky, or whether Heraclitus was right to rebuke Hesiod for treating some days as good and others as bad, on the ground that he did not know that every day has the same nature—this has been discussed elsewhere.

But it might perhaps suit the present narrative to recall a few examples. In Boeotia, on the fifth of the month Hippodromius—which the Athenians call Hecatombaeon—two most celebrated victories happened to fall, by which the Greeks were set free: the battle of Leuctra, and the earlier one at Ceressus, more than two hundred years before it, when they defeated Lattamyas and the Thessalians.

This again: the Persians were defeated by the Greeks on the sixth of the month Boedromion at Marathon, and on the third day of that month at both Plataea and Mycale, and, on the twenty-fifth day, at Arbela. It was likewise the Athenians who won the sea-fight off Naxos, under the generalship of Chabrias, around the full moon of Boedromion, and at Salamis around the twentieth, as we have shown in our work On Days.

The month Thargelion, too, has clearly brought misfortunes to the barbarians: for Alexander defeated the King's generals at the Granicus in Thargelion, and the Carthaginians were defeated in Sicily by Timoleon on the seventh from the end of the same month—around which time Troy too is thought to have fallen, in Thargelion, as Ephorus and Callisthenes and Damastes and Phylarchus have recorded.

By contrast, the month Metageitnion—called Panemus among the Boeotians—has proven no friend to the Greeks. Its seventh day saw them wiped out when Antipater crushed them at Crannon, just as, earlier, their fortunes turned against them at Chaeronea in the fight with Philip. That same day, in that same month, in that identical year, brought the destruction of Archidamus's men, who had gone across into Italy, at the hands of the natives there.

The Carthaginians keep careful watch of the ninth from the end of the month, as the day that has always brought them the most and greatest misfortunes. Nor am I unaware that around the time of the Mysteries, Thebes was likewise razed by Alexander, and afterward the Athenians received a Macedonian garrison around the very twentieth of Boedromion, the day on which they lead out the mystic Iacchus.

Likewise the Romans, on this same day, first lost the army under Caepio to the Cimbri, and later, under the generalship of Lucullus, defeated the Armenians and Tigranes. And King Attalus and Pompey the Great both died on their own birthdays. In general, one could point to many people who have experienced both fortune and misfortune returning on the same cycles.

But for the Romans this day is one of the most inauspicious of all, and because of it two other days each month are likewise regarded so, since caution and superstition, once aroused by such an event, tend to spread further, as is usual. These matters have been treated more carefully in our work On Roman Causes.

After that battle, had the Gauls pressed the pursuit of the fleeing men without delay, nothing could have kept Rome from complete ruin, with everyone remaining inside it wiped out as well: such was the panic the fugitives spread among those who took them in, and such was the disordered terror that then gripped those very people in turn,

but as it was, the barbarians, disbelieving the scale of their own victory and turning instead to enjoyment out of sheer delight, and to dividing up the goods captured in the camp, gave the crowd streaming out of the city an easy chance to flee, and gave those who remained time to hope and prepare; for abandoning the rest of the city, they fortified the Capitoline with missiles and cross-walls.

Among the first of the sacred things, some they carried up to the Capitoline, while the Vestal virgins snatched up the fire of Vesta along with the other sacred objects and fled with them. And yet some record that what is guarded by these virgins is nothing other than an undying fire, established by King Numa as an object of reverence above all else, since among natural things fire is the one possessed of the greatest activity:

for all coming-into-being is a kind of motion, or occurs together with some motion, while the other portions of matter, lying idle once heat fails them and resembling corpses, long for the power of fire as if for a soul, and once it approaches, they somehow turn to acting and being acted upon. This, then, since Numa was an extraordinary man and, through his wisdom, was said to keep company with the Muses, he consecrated and had kept ever wakeful, as an image of the eternal power that orders all things; while others say the fire itself,

as among the Greeks, burns before shrines as a purifying element, while other things within, unseen, are hidden from everyone except these virgins, whom they call the Vestals; and the prevailing account held that the famous Trojan Palladium was stored there, brought to Italy by Aeneas. But there are those who tell the Samothracian myth that it was Dardanus who carried it out to Troy and performed the rites and consecrated it when he founded the city, and that Aeneas, at its capture, stole it away and preserved it until his settlement in Italy.

Yet others, professing fuller knowledge of these matters, claim that two small jars are kept in that place, one left open with nothing inside, the other closed up and full, and that neither may be looked upon except by the most sacred of the virgins. Still others hold that all these accounts are wrong, and say that at that time the maidens put most of the sacred objects into two jars and hid them underground beneath the temple of Quirinus, so that the spot is called, to this day, the Pithisci.

Taking up the most important and greatest of the sacred objects, the Vestals made their retreat in flight along the river. There Lucius Albinius, one of the ordinary citizens, chanced to be among those fleeing, carrying off his infant children and wife along with necessary possessions on a wagon. When he saw the virgins carrying the sacred objects of the gods in their arms, walking along without any attendants and in distress, he quickly took his wife down from the wagon along with the children and the goods, and gave them a place to climb up and escape to one of the Greek cities,

and Albinius's piety and the honor he showed the divine, displayed at so dangerous a moment, ought not to go unrecorded. Meanwhile the ministers of the remaining gods, together with the older men who had served as consuls and celebrated triumphs, found they could not bear to desert the city; instead they arrayed themselves in their gleaming ceremonial vestments, and, with Fabius the pontifex at their head, offered prayers to the gods, as though dedicating themselves to the divine power on their country's behalf, then took their places, richly attired, in their ivory chairs in the forum, to await whatever fate would bring.

Brennus reached the city three days after the battle, bringing his army against it; finding its gates unshut and its walls unmanned, he at first suspected an ambush or ruse, since he could scarcely credit that the Romans had abandoned all resistance. Once he learned the truth, however, he entered through the Colline Gate and captured Rome, some three hundred sixty-odd years past its founding—assuming any exact count from that era deserves trust, given that the confusion surrounding those years has cast doubt even on the dating of events that came later—

yet it seems that some dim rumor of this disaster and capture immediately reached Greece. For Heraclides of Pontus, who lived not long after those times, says in his treatise On the Soul that a report had come from the west that an army come from the Hyperboreans from outside had taken a Greek city, Rome, settled somewhere near the great sea.

I would not be surprised, then, if Heraclides, who had a taste for fable-making, dressed up the genuine report of the city's fall with talk of Hyperboreans and a boundless sea. As for the philosopher Aristotle, he plainly had accurate word that the Celts were the ones who took the city, but says that its savior was Lucius—though it was Marcus, not Lucius, who was Camillus. But this has been said only by way of conjecture.

Having taken possession of Rome, Brennus stationed a guard around the Capitoline, and himself, going down through the forum, marveled at the sight of the men sitting in their places in order and silence, watching how they neither rose up as the enemy approached nor changed their expression or color, but leaned at ease and without fear upon the staves they carried, and gazed at one another in quiet.

It was a source of wonder to the Gauls at such strangeness, and for a long time, hesitating to touch or approach them as though they were superior beings, they were at a loss. But when one of them grew bold enough to come close to Marcus Papirius, and reaching out his hand gently touched his beard and pulled at it, for it was long and thick, Papirius struck him on the head with his staff and cracked his skull, and the barbarian, drawing his sword, killed him,

After this they fell upon and killed the rest as well, and dispatched all others they came upon, and plundered the houses for many days, carrying off and driving away goods, and then set them on fire and tore them down, being enraged at the men holding the Capitol because, though summoned, they would not yield, but even inflicted wounds on their assailants in self-defense from the barrier wall. For these reasons they ravaged the city and further destroyed those they captured, alike men and women, alike old men and children.

As the siege dragged on, the Gauls needed provisions; so they divided themselves, some remaining with the king to guard the Capitol, others going about the countryside plundering and sacking the villages by sudden assault, not all together, but different bands under their own leaders and companies, growing bold from their successes and fearing nothing as they scattered abroad.

The largest and most disciplined portion of them made for the city of the Ardeates, where Camillus was staying, idle from public affairs since his exile and living as a private citizen, entertaining hopes and calculations not of a man content merely to escape and elude the enemy, but of one watching for the moment when, should opportunity come, he might strike back.

For this reason, seeing the Ardeates sufficient in numbers but lacking boldness through the inexperience and softness of their generals, he first put an argument to the young men, that they must not think the Romans' misfortune to be the valor of the Celts, nor consider what those men suffered through their own bad judgment to be the achievement of men who contributed nothing toward victory, but rather regard it as a display of fortune.

It would be a fine thing, he said, even at risk to repel a war that was foreign and barbarian, a war whose only limit in victory, like fire's, is the destruction of the one defeated; but moreover, if they showed courage and eagerness, he would provide them victory without danger, at the right moment. When the young men had welcomed these words, Camillus went to the magistrates and elders of the Ardeates. And when he had won them over as well, he armed all of military age and kept them within the wall, wishing to remain unnoticed by the enemy, who were nearby,

since the Gauls, having ridden over the countryside and being weighed down by the great quantity of what they were driving off and carrying away, had encamped carelessly and negligently in the plain; and when night came on them drunk and silence held the camp, Camillus, learning this from his scouts, led out the Ardeates; and having crossed the intervening ground quietly, around midnight he closed upon their camp, raising a great shout and throwing them into confusion on every side with the trumpets, catching men still badly fuddled from drink and barely rousing themselves from sleep at the uproar.

A few, sobering up in their fear and arming themselves, stood their ground against Camillus's men, so that they fell fighting in self-defense; but the greater number, still overpowered by sleep and wine, were caught unarmed and killed. As for those who fled from the camp by night — not many — the cavalry rode them down the next day as they scattered in disorder about the countryside, and destroyed them.

The report of this deed, quickly spreading to the cities, called out many of military age to muster, especially those Romans who, having escaped from the battle at the Allia, were at Veii and lamented among themselves: "What a leader Fortune took from Rome and gave to adorn the Ardeates with Camillus's successes, while the city that bore and raised such a man is gone and destroyed.

We, for want of generals, sit huddled behind walls not our own, having abandoned Italy. Come, let us send to the Ardeates and demand back our own general, or ourselves take up arms and go to him; for he has left behind the status of exile, and we ourselves no longer belong to a fatherland that has ceased to exist, but rather to one now in enemy hands." This they resolved, and sending to Camillus they begged him to accept the command,

but he replied he would take no such action until those citizens remaining on the Capitol had cast their vote as required by law. For he held that those men, being preserved, were the fatherland, and if they commanded he would obey eagerly, but against their will he would meddle in nothing. They marveled at Camillus's scrupulousness and nobility of spirit. But there was difficulty in finding someone to carry this message to the Capitol — indeed it seemed altogether impossible, with the enemy holding the city, for a messenger to make his way to the citadel.

There was among the young men one Pontius Cominius, of middling birth among the citizens but a lover of glory and honor; this man undertook the task voluntarily. He took no letter to those on the Capitol, lest, if he were caught, the enemy should discover Camillus's design through it, but wearing plain clothing and carrying corks under it, he traveled the greater part of the road fearlessly by day, and coming near the city already in darkness, because the bridge was watched by the barbarians and thus closed to him as a way over the river,

he wound the clothing about his head — not much nor heavy — and, entrusting his body to the corks and helping himself along by swimming, crossed over to the city and came out. And always avoiding those who were awake, judging their locations by the glow of their lamps and the sound of their voices, he pressed on toward the Carmentine Gate, the quietest spot along the wall, and where above all the hill of the Capitol rises steeply and much rough rock surrounds it in a circle; by this he climbed up unseen and came to the men guarding the barrier wall, with difficulty and only just, at the least steep point.

Greeting the men and telling his name, he was helped up and brought to the Roman officials. Quickly a senate was convened, and coming before them he announced Camillus's victory, of which they had not yet heard, and related what the soldiers had decided; and he urged them to confirm the command for Camillus, since the citizens outside would obey no one else,

and hearing this and deliberating, they named Camillus dictator and sent Pontius homeward once more along that same path, and fortune favored him again. For he passed unnoticed by the enemy and brought word of the senate's decision to the Romans outside.

Those men having received it eagerly, Camillus, arriving, found already twenty thousand under arms, and gathered more from the allies, and prepared for the assault. Thus Camillus was chosen dictator a second time, and going to Veii he met with the soldiers and gathered more from the allies, intending to attack the enemy. Meanwhile, back in the city, a handful of the barbarians happened to pass along the very spot where Pontius had made his nighttime approach to the Capitol, and noticing in many spots the tracks of hands and feet where he had gripped and clutched, and in many spots the rubbed-off bark of plants growing on the cliffs and the slipping of the soil, reported it to the king.

And he, coming and seeing it, at that time held quiet, but in the evening, gathering together the lightest of body among the Celts, those most accustomed to mountain-climbing, said, "The enemy themselves are showing us a way to reach them that we did not know existed, proving that it is neither impassable nor unclimbable for men, and it would be shameful indeed, once we have started, to give up short of the goal and leave this place unconquered, since our foes themselves have shown us the point of access — for a climb manageable by a single man is no great trouble for a larger number ascending one after another, particularly when they undertake it with vigor and lend each other support. Gifts and honors befitting their valor will be given to each man."

When the king had spoken thus, the Gauls willingly undertook it, and around midnight, climbing the rock together in great numbers, they went up in silence, clinging to the ground where it was steep and difficult; yet, as they attempted it, it proved more yielding and accommodating than expected,

so that the first to reach the top and get themselves ready were on the point of touching the outer wall and attacking the sleeping guards; for neither man nor dog had noticed them. But there were sacred geese kept around the temple of Hera, fed abundantly at other times, but now, since their grain was already scanty and barely sufficient, being neglected they were in poor condition.

Now this creature is by nature sharp of perception and easily startled, and these, moreover, having become sleepless and clamorous from hunger, quickly perceived the approach of the Gauls, and rushing at them with running and honking woke everyone up, since the barbarians too, now that they were no longer unnoticed, no longer spared any noise and pressed the attack more violently.

So each man snatched up whatever weapon came to hand in his haste, and rushed to help as best he could on the spot. First of all was Manlius, a man of consular rank, powerful of body and conspicuous for his high spirit; meeting two of the enemy together, he got ahead of one who had raised his curved sword and cut off his right hand with his own blade, and struck the other in the face with his shield and shoved him backward off the rock,

and standing at the wall together with those who had run to join him and gathered around him, he drove back the rest, who had neither come up in great numbers nor accomplished anything worthy of their daring; and having escaped the danger in this way, at daybreak they threw the captain of the guard down onto the enemy from the rock, and to Manlius, as a reward for his victory, they voted honors more for prestige than for practical use, contributing to him as much as each man received in a day's ration — half a pound of grain (as they call it locally) and a quarter of a Greek pint of wine.

After this the Celts' spirits were more dejected. For they were short of supplies, being kept from foraging by fear of Camillus, and disease began to creep in among them, encamped as they were amid the piled-up corpses of the dead lying about among the ruins, while the depth of ash, sending up an atmosphere made foul with dryness and sharpness by winds and heat, damaged their bodies through their breathing.

But most of all the change from their accustomed way of life — from shady places with pleasant shelters in summer — into a low-lying land poorly suited for the change of season toward autumn, wore them down, and the long, idle sitting they endured at the Capitol, for they had now been keeping to their quarters in siege for the seventh month; so that there was great mortality in the camp, and the dead could no longer even be buried, so numerous had they become.

Nor, however, were things any better for the besieged. For famine grew worse, and ignorance of what was happening with Camillus's forces caused despondency, for no one came to them from outside, the city being closely guarded by the barbarians; whence, both sides being in this condition, negotiations for a settlement arose, first between the outposts meeting one another, and then, as it seemed best to the leading men,

when Sulpicius, the Roman military tribune, came to a conference with Brennus, it was agreed that the Romans should pay down a thousand pounds of gold, and the Gauls, upon receiving it, should at once withdraw from the city and the countryside. When oaths had been sworn on these terms and the gold brought out, and the Celts around the scales acted dishonestly, first secretly, then openly, dragging down and tilting the balance, the Romans grew indignant at them.

But Brennus, as if mocking and jeering, took off his sword along with his belt and added it to the weights. When Sulpicius asked, "What is this?" "What else," he said, "but grief for the conquered?" This has already become a proverbial saying. Of the Romans, some were indignant and thought they should take back the gold and depart again and endure the siege; others urged them to yield, suffering moderate wrong, and not to add shame to shame by giving more, since giving at all, though not honorable, was necessary given the circumstance and must be endured.

While this dispute was going on both with the Celts and among themselves, Camillus, leading his army, was at the gates; and learning what was happening, he ordered the rest to follow in order and at an easy pace, while he himself, hurrying on with the best men, went at once toward the Romans.

When all had made way and received him as commander-in-chief with order and silence, he took the gold off the scale and gave it to his attendants, and ordered the Celts to take the scale and weights and withdraw, saying that it was the ancestral custom of the Romans to save their fatherland with iron, not with gold. When Brennus grew indignant and said he was being wronged, the agreement being broken, Camillus replied that it had not been made lawfully nor was the compact valid,

for he had already been chosen dictator, and no other magistrate had lawful authority, so the pact had been struck with men lacking any authority to strike it. He told them, therefore, to state their wishes plainly, since he had arrived as their lawful and sovereign ruler, both to grant pardon to those who asked for it and to inflict punishment, if they did not repent, on those responsible.

At this Brennus, provoked, engaged in a skirmish, and both sides advanced as far as drawing swords and pushing each other about, mingled together as was natural, moving about in houses and narrow streets where they could not form a battle line. Brennus, quickly coming to his senses, led the Celts back to their camp, not many having fallen, and rousing them all by night he left the city, and advancing sixty stadia encamped by the Gabine road.

At daybreak Camillus was upon him, armed splendidly with the Romans' spirits now high with confidence; and following a long and hard-fought battle, he crushed them, inflicting heavy losses, and seized their camp. Among those who escaped, some were killed at once as they were pursued, but the greater part, scattered abroad, were cut down by men rushing out from the surrounding villages and towns.

Thus Rome, against all reason, was taken, and against still greater reason was saved, having been seven months in all under the barbarians; since the barbarians had entered the city only days past the Ides of Quintilis and were expelled around the Ides of February. Camillus held a triumph, a fitting honor for the man who had restored a fatherland that had been lost, and

It was as if the city were being led back into itself. For those from outside, together with their children and wives, marched in alongside him, while the people who had endured the siege atop the Capitoline, barely escaping death by starvation, came forth to greet them, clasping each other in their arms and shedding tears of happiness at that moment. Priests and temple-attendants of the gods, carrying back whatever sacred objects they had hidden there while fleeing from profane hands or had smuggled out with themselves, displayed to the citizens sights long yearned for, who received them with joy, as though the gods themselves were coming down again together into Rome.

After sacrificing to the gods and purifying the city, under the guidance of those expert in such matters, he restored what remained of the sacred rites, and he himself founded a temple to Rumor and Voice, having discovered that very spot where, by night, the voice announcing the barbarian army had fallen from a god upon Marcus Caedicius.

With difficulty and only slowly, then, were the sites of the sacred places uncovered again, through Camillus's zeal and the great labor of the priests. But when the city itself had to be rebuilt, utterly destroyed as it was, discouragement toward the task fell upon the multitude, and there was hesitation among men stripped of everything and in need, at that moment, of some ease and rest from their troubles rather than of toiling and wearing themselves out further, being strong neither in resources nor in body.

So quietly turning back again toward Veii, a city fully furnished and still standing, they gave openings to those accustomed to speaking for popular favor to begin their demagoguery, and they listened to seditious talk against Camillus, as though he, for the sake of his own ambition and glory, were depriving them of a ready-made city and forcing them to camp among ruins and to raise up so great a conflagration, so that he might be called not only leader and general of Rome, but founder too, pushing Romulus aside.

Alarmed by this outcry, the Senate refused to let Camillus resign his post before the year had run its course, even though he desired to do so — no previous dictator had ever held office beyond six months; and the Senate itself worked to soothe and reassure the populace, appealing to them and pointing to their fathers' graves and tombs, recalling the consecrated shrines and sacred sites that Romulus, Numa, or one of the other kings had dedicated and passed down to them.

Among the first of the divine signs they brought forward was the freshly-severed head that had appeared at the laying of the foundations of the Capitol, as a portent that the place was fated to become the head of Italy, and also the fire of Vesta, which, after the war, had been kindled again by the virgins — that those who abandoned the city would extinguish and put it out once more, a reproach that would fall on them whether they saw it inhabited by other newcomers and strangers, or saw it deserted and given over to grazing sheep.

Saying such things, both to individuals privately and often together in public before the people, they wore down again the resolve of the many, who lamented their present helplessness and begged not to be forced, as men saved naked and destitute from a shipwreck, to piece together the remnants of a ruined city, when another lay ready at hand.

It was resolved, then, to bring the matter before the Senate for Camillus to decide. He himself spoke at length, urging them on behalf of the fatherland, and many others too, whoever wished, spoke at length; but finally, having called up Lucius Lucretius, the one accustomed to give his opinion first, he bade him declare his view first, and then the others in order.

A silence fell, and as Lucretius was about to begin, by chance a centurion leading a company on the day watch was passing by outside, and, calling in a loud voice to the man carrying the standard at the front, he ordered him to stay right there and plant the standard, for it would be best to sit down and remain in that very spot. At this coincidence of timing, together with the anxious thought of what was to come, and the ambiguity of the words as they had fallen, Lucretius, bowing before the god, said he added his own opinion in agreement, and each of the others followed suit.

A wondrous change of impulse seized the multitude too, as they called out to one another and urged each other on to the work, not by any distribution or ordering, but each seizing whatever plot he was ready or willing to take. That is why the city, raised up again in haste and speed, came out confused in its narrow lanes and jumbled together in its dwellings; for within a single year, it is said, it rose again complete both in its walls and in its private buildings.

Those whom Camillus had assigned to recover and delineate the sacred sites, everything being in disorder, found the shrine of Mars — which they reached while making their round of the Palatine — destroyed and burned by the barbarians, like everything else. But as they were clearing and purifying the site, they came upon the divining-staff of Romulus, sunk deep beneath a great mass of ashes.

The lituus, as it is called, curves at one extremity; augurs employ it to divide the regions of the sky as they sit interpreting the flight of birds, just as Romulus himself once did, being highly skilled in the art of divination. After his disappearance from among mortals, the priesthood retrieved the staff and kept it safe and untouched, as they would any other sacred relic. Finding it now, when everything else had perished, having escaped destruction, they grew more hopeful for Rome's future, as though this sign guaranteed her salvation as everlasting.

Before they had yet finished with these concerns, war fell upon them: the Aequians, the Volscians, and the Latins together invaded their territory, while the Etruscans besieged Sutrium, a city allied with the Romans. And when the military tribunes in command, camped near Mount Marcius, found themselves surrounded by the Latin forces and at risk of forfeiting their camp entirely, they dispatched a message to Rome; in response, Camillus received his third appointment as dictator.

Concerning this war two accounts are given. I shall recount first the legendary one. They say that the Latins, whether using this as a pretext or truly wishing to mingle the two peoples again from the beginning, sent envoys demanding from the Romans free-born maidens in marriage. The Romans, at a loss what to do — for they dreaded war, not yet having settled themselves or recovered — and suspecting that this demand for women was really a demand for hostages, though dressed up as a marriage-alliance for propriety's sake — at which point a household slave girl called Tutula, or, as others tell it,

Philotis, advised the magistrates to send along with her the most attractive and free-looking of the household slave-girls, dressed to appear as noblewomen, and to leave the rest to her. The magistrates, persuaded, chose out from among the slave-girls as many as she judged fit for the purpose, and, having adorned them with fine clothing and gold, delivered them into the hands of the Latins, whose camp lay not far from the city.

By night the other girls stole away the weapons of the enemy, while she — whether Tutula or Philotis — having climbed a great wild fig tree and spread her cloak behind her, raised a torch toward Rome, as had been arranged with the magistrates, with no other citizen aware of it. Because of this the soldiers' sortie was made in tumult, as the magistrates hurried them along, calling to one another and only with difficulty falling into order; but falling upon the enemy's camp while they lay unguarded and asleep, they seized it and killed the greater part of the men within.

This, they say, happened on what are now the Julian, but then the Quintilian, Nones, and the festival celebrated commemorates that deed. First, going out together in a crowd through the gate, they shout aloud many common local names — Gaius, Marcus, Lucius, and the like — imitating the hurried calling-out to one another that occurred on that occasion.

Then the slave-girls, splendidly adorned, go about jesting and mocking those they meet, and a kind of mock battle takes place among themselves, as though they too had taken part then in the struggle against the Latins. Feasting, they sit shaded by branches of fig; and they call the day the Nones of the Goat, as they suppose, because of the wild fig tree from which the girl raised the torch — for they call the wild fig the 'goat-fig.'

Others say that most of these things are done and told concerning the fate of Romulus, for it was on this very day, they say, that he vanished outside the gate, when darkness and a sudden storm swept round him, or, as some believe, when an eclipse of the sun occurred; and the day was called the Nones of the Goat from the place, for they call the she-goat 'capra.' Romulus vanished while addressing the people near the place called the Goat's Marsh, as is written in the account concerning him.

The other account, which most historians favor, runs as follows. Camillus, having been named dictator for the third time, learned that the force under the military tribunes had been surrounded by the combined Latin and Volscian armies, and so was compelled to arm even those citizens already past military age.

Making a long circuit around Mount Marcius and eluding the enemy, he stationed his army in their rear, and by lighting many fires signaled his own presence. Those under siege, taking heart, resolved to march out and

join battle; but the Latins and Volscians, drawing themselves inside their camp, fortified it with a great many stakes and fenced it in on every side, having become caught between two enemies and having resolved to wait for another force from home, while also expecting help from the Etruscans. Perceiving this, Camillus, fearing to suffer what he himself had done to the enemy by surrounding them, hastened to seize the moment.

Since the palisade was made of wood and a strong wind was blowing down from the mountains at daybreak, he prepared fire-missiles, and leading out his force around dawn, ordered the rest to use arrows and shouting on one side, while he himself, keeping with him those who were to hurl the fire, took up a position from which the wind usually struck hardest against the enemy's camp, and waited for the right moment. When the battle was already joined and the sun was rising and the wind broke out strong, he gave the signal for the charge and scattered abundant fire-missiles over the camp.

Quickly, the flame, fed by the dense timber and the wooden stockade, rose up and spread round in a circle, and the Latins, having no remedy or means of quenching it ready at hand, when the camp was already full of fire, crowded together into a small space and were forced out against the armed and drawn-up enemy before the palisade. Of these few escaped, but all those left behind in the camp the fire destroyed, until the Romans, putting it out, plundered the goods.

When this had happened, leaving his son Lucius behind at the camp as guard over the captives and the goods, he himself invaded the enemy's territory. Taking the city of the Aequians and winning over the Volscians, he immediately led his army toward Sutrium, not yet having learned what had befallen the people of Sutrium, but hastening to help them, thinking they were still in danger and under siege by the Etruscans.

In fact they had already given up their city to the enemy, and, stripped of all their possessions, had been driven out with nothing left to them but the cloaks on their backs; and as Camillus was on the road, they met him together with their children and wives, lamenting their misfortunes. Camillus himself, moved to pity at the sight, and seeing the Romans too, as the people of Sutrium clung to them, weeping and grieving over what had happened, resolved not to delay retribution,

but to march at once against Sutrium that very day, reckoning that men who had just seized a prosperous and wealthy city, leaving none of the enemy behind in it and expecting no attack from outside, would be found utterly relaxed and unguarded — and he reckoned rightly, for he not only passed through the country unnoticed, but even came up to the gates and took possession of the walls; for no one was keeping watch, but they were scattered about the houses, given over to wine and revelry.

When they perceived that the enemy was already in control, they were in such a wretched state from gluttony and drunkenness that many could not even rouse themselves to flee, but remained in their houses to die most shamefully of all, or to surrender themselves to the enemy. Thus it came about that the city of Sutrium, captured twice in a single day, both lost its possessors and had them restored through Camillus, its former ones losing it and the dispossessed regaining it.

The triumph that came from these deeds brought him no less favor and honor than his first two. For even those citizens most given to envy, and most inclined to attribute everything to good fortune rather than to merit, were now compelled by these very achievements to give credit for the glory to the man's ability and energy.

Most conspicuous among those who contended against him and begrudged him was Marcus Manlius, the one who had first thrust the Gauls back from the citadel when they attacked the Capitol by night, and who for this was surnamed Capitolinus. This man, claiming to be first among the citizens and unable to surpass Camillus in reputation by honorable means,

adopted the common and familiar pretext for tyranny, courting the favor of the common people, especially those in debt, defending and pleading the cause of some against their creditors, and forcibly rescuing others and preventing them from being brought before the law, so that many of the poor quickly gathered around him and caused great fear among the best of the citizens, who grew bold and threw the forum into turmoil.

When Quintus Capitolinus was appointed dictator to deal with this and threw Manlius into prison, the people, once this happened, changed their dress, a thing done only on occasions of great and public calamity. The Senate, fearing the uproar, ordered Manlius released. But he, once released, was no better, but carried on his demagoguery more insolently still and threw the city into faction. So they elected Camillus military tribune again.

When the trials against Manlius were brought in, the sight of the place did great harm to his accusers. For the spot on which Manlius had stood when he fought the Gauls by night rose above the forum, in view from the Capitol, and it moved those who saw it to pity: Manlius himself, stretching out his hands toward it and weeping, called to their minds his struggles there, so that the judges were at a loss and again and again put off the trial, unwilling to let the crime go unpunished in the face of such clear evidence, yet unable to apply the law while the very scene of the deed lay before their eyes because of the place.

Camillus, perceiving this, had the court moved outside the gate to the Petelian grove; there, since the Capitol was no longer in view, the prosecutor made good his charge, and the judges' memory of what had happened was left free to take up the anger the present offenses deserved.

Manlius, then, was convicted and led away to the Capitol, and hurled down from the very rock which was at once the monument of his most fortunate deeds and of his greatest disasters. The Romans tore down his house and on that spot built a shrine to the goddess called Moneta, and from then on decreed that no patrician was to have his dwelling on the citadel.

Camillus, called to a sixth military tribunate, tried to decline, being now advanced in years and fearing perhaps some envy and resentment at such great glory and successes; but the most evident of his reasons was bodily weakness, for he happened to be ill at that time.

The people, however, would not release him from office, but crying out that they had no need of him to ride or fight hand to hand in battle, only to deliberate and give orders, compelled him to take up the command and, jointly with a fellow officer, Lucius Furius, to march the army straightaway against the foe. Those enemies were the Praenestines together with the Volscians, who were laying waste the territory of Rome's allies with a sizeable force.

Marching out and encamping beside the enemy, Camillus himself wished to wear down the war by delay, and, should a battle prove necessary, to wait until his body had recovered strength before engaging; but Lucius, his fellow commander, carried away by desire for glory, rushed uncontrollably toward the danger and stirred up the captains and company-commanders along with him. Camillus, fearing that he might seem out of some jealousy to be robbing young men of success and honor, reluctantly let Lucius draw up the army for battle, while Camillus, owing to his own frailty at the time, stayed behind in the camp with only a few men.

When Lucius rashly engaged and was defeated, Camillus, seeing that the Romans had broken into flight, was unable to hold back; he sprang up from his couch and, together with his attendants, hurried to intercept them right at the camp's entrances, forcing his way past the fleeing men toward those chasing them, so that some at once turned back and followed him, while others coming on from outside took their stand before him and locked shields, exhorting one another not to abandon their commander.

At that time, then, the enemy were thus turned back from their pursuit; but on the following day Camillus led out the army, joined battle, and won a decisive victory, capturing their camp as he burst in together with the fleeing enemy and destroying the greater part of them. Learning after this that the town of Satricum had been taken by the Tyrrhenians and that its inhabitants, who were all Romans, had been slaughtered, he sent the bulk and the heavier part of his force back to Rome, while he himself, taking those who were in the prime of their strength and most eager, fell upon the Tyrrhenians who held the town, and, prevailing, drove some of them out and killed others.

Returning to Rome with much booty, Camillus showed that those had been wisest of all who had not feared the weakness and age of a commander possessed of experience and daring, but had chosen him unwilling and ill rather than those in the prime of life who begged and were eager to command. For this reason too, when the Tusculans were said to have revolted, they bade Camillus march out against them, choosing one of the five fellow-commanders to accompany him.

Though all wished and asked to be chosen, he passed over the rest and chose Lucius Furius, whom no one would have expected — for this was the very man who, against Camillus's judgment, had lately been eager to fight and had met with misfortune in the battle. But wanting, it would seem, to cover up the man's setback and lift the disgrace from him, he promoted Lucius ahead of everyone else.

The Tusculans, craftily setting right their fault, when Camillus was already marching against them, filled the plain with people farming and pasturing as though in peace, kept their gates open and their children at their lessons in the schools; the common people could be seen at their trades in the workshops, and the better sort in the forum wearing their cloaks, while the magistrates went busily about announcing billets for the Romans, as though expecting no trouble and conscious of no wrongdoing. Seeing this done, Camillus was not led to disbelieve the treason, but, pitying their repentance for it, bade them go to the senate and beg pardon for their anger; and when they made their plea he himself joined in securing that the city be absolved of all blame and granted equal citizenship. These, then, were the most notable achievements of his sixth tribunate.

After this, when Licinius Stolo stirred up great strife in the city — the people contending against the senate and insisting that of the two consuls to be appointed, at least one ought to come from the commons rather than having both be patricians, the people’s tribunes were then elected, yet the commons kept the consular elections from taking place,

and as affairs, drifting through lack of government, were carried into still greater disorder, Camillus was appointed dictator by the senate, against the will of the people, for the fourth time — he himself not eager for it, nor wishing to oppose men who had good cause to speak freely against him from many great struggles, since he had accomplished more together with them in campaigns than with the patricians in civil affairs, and now had been chosen by the patricians out of envy of the people, so that either he might overpower and put down the people by his strength, or, failing to prevail, be himself brought down.

Still, striving to counter the situation at hand, once he found out which day the tribunes planned to introduce their bill, he called a levy of soldiers and drew the people away from the forum out to the Campus, threatening severe punishment for anyone who disobeyed.

When the tribunes in turn rose up against these threats and swore that they would fine him fifty thousand pieces of silver if he did not stop stripping the people of their law and their vote, then — whether fearing another exile and condemnation, unbecoming to a man so old and of such great achievements, or being unable, and unwilling, to overcome the people's force, which was unconquerable and hard to withstand — he then withdrew home; and on the following days, pretending illness, he resigned his office.

The senate appointed another dictator, who, having named as his master of horse Stolo himself, the leader of the sedition, allowed him to ratify the law that most vexed the patricians; it ordained that no one should possess more than five hundred iugera of land. At that time Stolo had become splendid, having prevailed by the vote; but a little later he himself was convicted of possessing more land than he had forbidden others to hold, and paid the penalty under his own law.

While the rivalry over the consular elections still remained — which was indeed the harshest part of the strife, the first to begin and the source of most of the trouble the senate had in its dealings with the people — clear reports arrived that the Gauls, having again set out from the Adriatic Sea, were advancing upon Rome in great numbers.

And along with the report came the actual doings of war, as the countryside was ravaged and its people, for whom it was not easy to take refuge in Rome, scattered into the mountains. This fear put an end to the strife, and the strongest men, coming together with the multitude, and the senate with the commons, all with one accord chose Camillus dictator for the fifth time.

He was now a very old man, wanting little of eighty years; but seeing the necessity and the danger, he neither pleaded excuse as before nor made use of any pretext, but at once undertook the command and enrolled those who were to fight. Knowing that the barbarians' strength lay chiefly in their swords, which they brought down in barbarous fashion and with no skill at all, cutting mostly at shoulders and heads,

for the greater part of his men he had iron helmets forged, smooth-surfaced along their curves, so that the swords would slip off or be shattered; and around their shields he fitted a rim of bronze plate, since the wood by itself could not withstand the blows; he also taught the soldiers themselves to use long javelins by hand and, thrusting them under the enemy's swords, to receive the blows upon them.

When the Gauls were near, holding a camp by the river Anio that was heavily laden with abundant plunder, Camillus led out his forces and stationed them along a gentle wooded valley with many hollows, so that most of them were hidden, while the part that was visible seemed, out of fear, to have huddled into steep ground.

Wishing to increase this impression of theirs, Camillus did not go to the defense of those being ravaged at his very feet, but, fortifying his camp, held still and waited, until he observed that part of the enemy had dispersed to forage while the rest, back in their camp, were stuffing themselves at all hours without restraint and falling into drunkenness.

Then, while it was still night, he sent forward his light-armed troops to hinder the barbarians as they formed up and to throw them into confusion the moment they came out, and at dawn he brought down his hoplites and drew them up on the level ground, many and eager, appearing not few and timid as the barbarians had expected. This first overturned the confidence of the Gauls, who thought themselves attacked beneath their worth. Then the light troops, falling upon them before they could take up their accustomed order and be sorted into companies, stirred them up and forced them, driven together at random, to fight in disarray.

At last, when Camillus brought up his hoplites, some of the Gauls, raising their swords, rushed to close with them, while others, meeting the javelins and taking the blows on the iron parts of their armor, turned back the enemy's iron, which was soft and thinly forged, so that their swords quickly bent and doubled over, and their shields became pinned together and weighed down by the javelins that clung to them.

For this reason, casting aside their own weapons, they tried to grapple with those of the Romans and to push the javelins aside by seizing them with their hands. But the Romans, seeing them now exposed, turned to their swords, and there was great slaughter of those in the front ranks, and flight of the rest over the whole plain; for Camillus had already occupied the hills and high ground beforehand, and the Gauls, having through overconfidence left their camp unfortified, knew it would not be hard for it to be taken.

This engagement, it is said, occurred in the thirteenth year following Rome's capture, and that from it a firm confidence against the Gauls grew up in the Romans, who had greatly feared the barbarians, believing that in the first encounter they had been overcome by them not by strength but through sickness and strange mischance. So strong, all the same, was the fear that they made a law releasing priests from military service unless the war were against the Gauls.

This was the last of Camillus's military contests; for he took the city of the Velitrani in the course of this campaign, it having surrendered to him without a fight. But the greatest of his political struggles still remained, and the harder one, against the people, who returned strong from their victory and pressed to have a consul appointed from the commons contrary to the established law, the senate resisting and not allowing Camillus to lay down his office, believing that with his strong and great authority they would fight better for the aristocracy.

When Camillus was presiding and transacting business in the forum, an officer sent out on the tribunes' orders told him to accompany him and laid a hand on him as if to drag him off; at once an outcry and commotion such as had never been heard before swept through the forum, as Camillus's supporters shoved the officer down from the platform and the multitude below calling out to drag him down; at a loss amid this turmoil, Camillus did not relinquish his office, but instead, gathering the senators about him, made his way toward the senate-house.

And before entering, he turned toward the Capitol and prayed the gods to guide the present affairs to the fairest end, promising to found a temple of Concord once the disturbance was settled. A great contest of opposing opinions took place in the senate, but the milder view prevailed, yielding to the people and granting that one of the consuls be elected from the multitude.

When the dictator announced this as the senate's decision to the people, at once, as was natural, they were reconciled, delighted with the senate, and escorted Camillus home with applause and shouting. On the next day they gathered and passed a decree to establish, just as Camillus had vowed, a shrine to Concord looking down over the forum and the assembly, in remembrance of these events,

and to add one more day to the festival called the Latin Festival, making it four days in all, and for all Romans at once to offer sacrifice and wear garlands. When the elections were conducted under Camillus's direction, Marcus Aemilius was installed as consul from the patrician order, and Lucius Sextius as the very first from the commons — and with this the deeds of Camillus came to their end.

In the following year a plague fell upon Rome and destroyed the common people beyond counting, and most of the magistrates besides. Camillus too died, in respect of age and the fullness of his life as ripe as any man's could be, but he grieved the Romans as much as all those together who died of the disease at that same time.

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