The Rise of Rome (Penguin Classics)

by Plutarch

  27. When the king finished speaking, the Gauls were eager to volunteer. Around midnight a large party began to climb, staying silent and clinging tightly to the cliff as they made their ascent past places that were precipitous and difficult. In the end, the climb proved less arduous than expected. Consequently, when the men in the lead had attained the summit and had armed themselves for battle, they very nearly captured the outer fortifications by falling upon its sleeping watchmen, for neither man nor dog was aware of their presence. But near the temple of Juno the Romans kept sacred geese, which in ordinary circumstances were fed generously, but at this time, because supplies were meagre and there was barely enough grain for the soldiers, were neglected and had lapsed into a miserable condition. Now by their very nature geese have keen hearing and are frightened by every sound, and, owing to their hunger, these geese were more than normally wakeful and restless. So, when they perceived the approach of the Gauls, they darted at them with a honking so loud that it awakened the garrison. Detected, the barbarians launched a loud and vigorous attack, but the Romans fought back at once, quickly snatching up whatever weapon was nearest. Manlius, a former consul,101 a strong man renowned for his fearlessness, was first into the fray, confronting two of the enemy at the same time. With his sword he lopped off the right hand of one, as the Gaul was lifting his axe, and by striking the other in the face with his shield he knocked him backwards and down the cliff. Taking his stand on the city wall with men who rushed to join him, Manlius drove back the rest of the enemy, few of whom had managed to reach the top and none of whom was now doing anything to match the audacity of their climb. Thus the Romans escaped this danger, and, as soon as it was morning, they flung the captain of the night-watch off the cliff, hurling him down to the enemy below. They voted to mark Manlius’ heroic victory with a reward that brought him greater honour than actual profit: everyone brought him his day’s allowance of food and drink, which was ‘half a pound’, as the Romans put it, of the local grain and an eighth of a pint of wine.102

  28. After this failure, the Gauls began to lose heart. Fear of Camillus kept them from foraging, but this left them in need of provisions, and because they were dwelling amid heaps of unburied corpses, they were gradually afflicted by disease. All about them was ruin, the deep ashes of which were blown about by hot winds, fouling the air and making it parched and stinging. Breathing itself became difficult and painful, but what affected them most of all was the shock to their system caused by their change of climate, for they had come from a place where shade offered easy respite from the heat of the summer into a low-lying land whose temperatures remained warm even in autumn. On top of all this was the long and tedious siege of the Capitol, which had now gone on for seven months. For all these reasons, mortality in the camp was high, and the number of the dead was so great that they could no longer be buried.

  None of this, however, improved matters for the besieged. Their hunger increased, as did their despair when they had heard nothing further of Camillus, whose messengers were unable to reach them because the city was now very closely guarded by the barbarians. Inasmuch, then, as each side was experiencing hardship, so both began to look for some means of arranging a truce, a possibility which in the first instance was explored by the sentries who stood guard nearest one another. Soon it was decided by the leaders on the Roman side that the consular tribune Sulpicius103 should hold a parley with Brennus. It was agreed that, if the Romans furnished 1,000 pounds of gold, the Gauls would take it and straightaway leave the city and the country. Oaths were sworn to confirm the terms of this agreement, and the gold was duly delivered. As the gold was being measured out, however, the Gauls tampered with the weights, secretly at first, but soon they were blatantly pulling at the balance of the scale and wildly distorting its accuracy. This was enough to anger the Romans, when Brennus, with an insolent laugh, removed his sword and belt and tossed both on the scale. Suplicius then asked, ‘What is this?’ ‘What else’, replied Brennus, ‘but woe to the conquered!’ This has since become a proverbial saying.104 Some of the Romans became enraged by this and wanted to reclaim their gold and go back to enduring the siege. But others recommended giving in to these trivial injustices, urging their comrades not to think that it was in paying more that they disgraced themselves but rather in paying at all, and reminding them how in this crisis they had no choice but to put aside their honour and submit to such things.

  29. As the Romans continued to bicker among themselves – and with the Celts – Camillus led his army to the gates of the city. When he was apprised of the situation within, he ordered the rest of his soldiers to put themselves in battle formation and to advance slowly, while he, along with his best men, hastened onwards until they reached the quarrelling Romans, who stood aside for him, since he was dictator, and received him with a courteous silence. Camillus then lifted the gold from the scales and gave it to his attendants, after which he ordered the Celts to take their scales and weights and depart, warning them that it was the Romans’ custom to rescue their city with iron, not with gold. In reaction to this, Brennus flew into a rage, claiming that he had been cheated by this breach of the Romans’ agreement. Camillus, however, replied that the terms of that agreement had not been arrived at legitimately and therefore were invalid. Because he had been chosen dictator, no other Roman magistrate was legally authorized to arrange a truce, and therefore Brennus had come to terms with men who were not empowered to negotiate on Rome’s behalf. Now, however, was the proper time for the Gauls to express their wishes, for they were in the presence of the magistrate who possessed the full legal competence to grant pardon to those who asked for it – and to punish the rest, unless they repented. This made Brennus cry out in fury, and a skirmish ensued, each side going so far as to draw their swords and struggle with one another in a confused melee, which was unsurprising since they were fighting amid houses and narrow lanes and other places where it was impossible to line up in battle array. Brennus soon recovered his senses, however, and led the Celts back to their camp, with the loss of only a few men. That night he broke camp, left the city and, after proceeding 60 stades, pitched a new camp along the road to Gabii.105 But at daybreak Camillus attacked them. He was splendid in his arms, and the soldiers under his command were once again Romans in full possession of their old courage. For a long time a fierce battle raged, but in the end the enemy were struck down in a terrible slaughter and their camp was seized. Some of the Gauls who fled were chased down and killed immediately, but most of them dispersed, only to be set upon and killed by men in the surrounding villages and cities.

  30. Thus was Rome captured unexpectedly, and even more unexpectedly rescued, after seven full months of barbarian occupation, for the Gauls entered the city a few days after the Ides of Quintilis and were driven out around the Ides of February.106 Camillus celebrated a triumph, as was only right for a man who had saved his country when it was lost and who now restored its citizens to their own city. The Romans who had been outside the city during the occupation, joined by their wives and children, followed Camillus as he entered Rome, while those who had been besieged on the Capitol and had come very close to starving to death, came out to meet them amid much embracing and weeping for joy in this moment of happiness. The priests and their attendants bore the sacred objects they had either buried in the city before they fled or had carried off as they escaped. In this way everyone could see that these had all been preserved, a most welcome sight that was greeted with jubilation, for it now seemed that the gods, too, were returning to Rome. After Camillus had made sacrifices and had ritually purified the city, in strict obedience to the instructions of men learned in these matters, he restored the existing temples and erected a new one, to Rumour and Voice,107 once he had located the very spot where, during the night, a divine voice had warned Marcus Caedicius about the barbarian army.

  31. Uncovering the sites of the temples that had been destroyed was extremely difficult and demanded the most extraordinary exertions,
but it was managed owing to Camillus’ zeal and the hard work of the priests. As for rebuilding the rest of the city, which was still in a state of utter ruin, the sheer enormity of the task left the people in complete despair. They kept putting off the work, complaining that they had no materials and that they needed rest and relief from their misfortunes instead of toil and exhaustion in an undertaking they had neither the resources nor the strength to carry out. Accordingly, their thoughts recurred, little by little, to Veii, for that city remained intact and was already furnished with everything. This was a situation ripe for demagogy, and soon politicians keen to curry public favour began venting seditious speeches that lashed out against Camillus. It was only for the sake of his personal ambition and glory, they claimed, that he was depriving the people of a city that was perfectly equipped for them to live in, forcing them instead to dwell amid ruins and erect what was in essence a massive funeral pyre – all in order that he be called, not simply the first citizen and general of Rome, but, replacing Romulus, its very founder.

  The senate, because it was fearful of these complaints, kept Camillus in office for a full year, contrary to his preferences and in spite of the fact that no one had ever been dictator longer than six months. In addition to this, the senate endeavoured to temper the public’s mood by means of friendly persuasion and by exhibiting a spirit of reconciliation. The senators pointed to the city’s ancestral tombs and sepulchres, and they recalled its shrines and holy places, consecrated and bequeathed to the people by Romulus or Numa or one of the other kings. They also rehearsed religious reasons for remaining in Rome, emphasizing in particular how the freshly severed head discovered when the foundations of the Capitol were dug signified that Rome was destined to be the head of all Italy.108 Furthermore, they drew the people’s attention to the sacred fire of Vesta, which, now that the war was over, had just been rekindled by the Vestal Virgins. They advised them that if, by deserting the city, they should lose or extinguish this flame, they would be greatly disgraced, whether the city was left to immigrants and foreigners or abandoned to flocks and herds. Again and again, the senators pressed individual Romans privately, as well as the community at large, employing arguments like these. But they also listened patiently as the people complained about their wretched condition and when they pleaded that they not be forced to repair the fragments of their ruined city – for they were like men who had escaped death at sea, alive, yes, but naked and destitute – when there was another city at their disposal.

  32. Camillus finally decided to put the matter before the senate. He opened the proceedings by delivering a long speech strongly in favour of remaining in Rome, but he allowed anyone else who wished to address the subject to speak freely. He then called on Lucius Lucretius,109 who was usually the first in the senate to express his view whenever an issue came to a vote, and asked him to deliver his opinion, after which he would call on the remaining senators in their turn. Silence fell, and, just as Lucretius was about to begin speaking, it so happened that a centurion, who was leading the watch of the day and was passing outside, shouted to his standard-bearer to halt and fix his standard on the spot, for, he said, this was the best place for them to take up their position and to remain. When this utterance was overheard, at so critical a moment of uncertainty about the future, Lucretius, in a spirit of religious deference, said simply that he agreed with the god,110 and each of the senators followed his example. Astonishingly, even the multitude then repented of its previous anger, and they cheered and encouraged one another in their labours. They set to work restoring the city, not by any orderly plan, but instead everyone began to build wherever he pleased or happened to find a spot. This explains Rome’s confusing and narrow streets as well as the haphazard placement of its houses. They certainly worked very rapidly, for we are told that within a year the city was completely rebuilt, not just its houses but its city walls as well.

  Camillus had assigned certain men the job of locating and marking out the boundaries of Rome’s sacred places, for they were all in complete disorder. Now these men, as they were inspecting the Palatine Hill, discovered that the shrine of Mars,111 like all the other sacred buildings, had been wrecked and burnt to the ground by the barbarians. And yet, while clearing and cleaning the place, they happened to find, buried deep beneath a large pile of ashes, the augural staff of Romulus. This kind of staff, curled at one end, is called a lituus and it is employed by the Romans in marking out the precincts of the sky whenever they engage in divination from the flight of birds, just as Romulus, who was skilled in augury, had done with this one.112 When Romulus vanished113 and no longer appeared among mortals, the priests watched over his staff, like any other sacred object, and kept it inviolate, and so now, when it was discovered intact and undamaged, although everything else had been destroyed, they rejoiced in their confidence for the future of Rome, for they believed this was a sure sign of her eternal invincibility.

  33. The Romans were still involved in rebuilding their city when war broke out. The Aequians, Volscians and Latins invaded their territory, while the Etruscans laid siege to Sutrium,114 a city allied to Rome. During this war, the consular tribunes in command of the army that was encamped near Mount Maecius found themselves surrounded by the Latins and at risk of being overwhelmed, and so they sent to Rome for help. It was on this occasion that Camillus was appointed dictator for the third time.115

  There are two accounts of this war, and I shall begin with the fabulous version,116 according to which the Latins, either as a pretext or because they honestly wished to revive the ancient relationship between their two nations, asked the Romans to supply them with freeborn virgins whom they might take as wives. The Romans did not know what to do, for on the one hand they dreaded the prospect of war while their circumstances remained disturbed and unsettled, yet, on the other, they suspected that the Latins’ request for wives was in reality a demand for hostages, even if, for the sake of appearances, they spoke about the matter in terms of marriage ties. At this very moment, a slave girl named Tutula, or, in some versions, Philotis, advised the magistrates to send her to the enemy, along with other slave girls who were in the bloom of youth and possessed the looks of freeborn Romans. They should be dressed, she proposed, as brides from the nobility. The rest, she told them, they could leave to her. The magistrates liked her idea, and so they selected as many slave girls as she thought suitable, adorned them in fine clothing and gold and handed them over to the Latins, who were encamped not far from the city. During the night, while the other women stole away with the swords of the enemy, Tutula, or Philotis, climbed to the top of a wild fig tree, spread her cloak behind her and lifted a torch towards Rome. She had agreed on this signal with the magistrates, but the other citizens knew nothing about it, which explains why the Roman soldiers rushed from the city in so much confusion, urged on by their officers and calling out to one another by name, and why they only just managed to put themselves in battle array before storming the camp of the enemy, whom they found asleep and completely unaware. Most of them were killed and their camp was captured. This took place on the Nones of July (which in those days was called Quintilis), and the festival the Romans celebrate on that day commemorates this event. They begin by running out of the city gate in crowds, loudly shouting many ordinary and familiar names, like Gaius, Marcus, Lucius and so forth, in imitation of the way the soldiers cried out to one another on that occasion as they rushed forth so hurriedly. Then the slave girls, brightly dressed, run about, playfully teasing the men they meet, and among themselves they conduct a mock battle, which recalls how they once played a part in the struggle against the Latins. And as they enjoy their feast, they sit beneath shade provided by the branches of a fig tree. They call this day the Capratine Nones,117 for they believe that it was from a wild fig tree that the slave lifted her torch and the Romans call a wild fig tree a caprificus.

  There are others, however, who explain this festival as a commemoration of the fate of Romulus, for it was on this same
day that he vanished, outside the city gate, in sudden darkness and storm, or, as many think, during an eclipse of the sun. They claim that the day is called the Capratine Nones on account of the place where he disappeared, for a she-goat is called a capra, and Romulus vanished as he was addressing the people at a place known as the Goat’s Marsh, an event which is recorded in his Life.118

  34. It is the other version of this war that most authorities prefer. In it, Camillus, when he was appointed dictator for the third time, was forced to enlist men of the city who were in fact too old for military service. This was because the army commanded by the consular tribunes had been trapped by the Latins and Volscians. Camillus began by making a lengthy circuit around Mount Maecius, which let him elude detection by the enemy and position his army securely in their rear. Then, by lighting numerous torches, he signalled his arrival to the Romans who were besieged in their camp. Taking courage from this, they began making preparations to march forth and join battle, which prompted the Latins and Volscians to withdraw to their own camp and barricade themselves on all sides with a strong wooden palisade, for they were now exposed to the enemy from both the front and the rear, and awaiting reinforcements from home as well as additional assistance from the Etruscans. When Camillus recognized their design, he became worried that, just as he had surrounded his enemy, he might himself soon be surrounded by them. And so he wasted no time in seizing the advantage of the moment.