The Rise of Rome

by Anthony Everitt

  Juno was given a temporary base, probably the plebeian sanctuary of Diana, while Camillus lived up to his word and built a new temple nearby, which he dedicated to the Queen of Heaven a few years after the destruction of Veii. We can only presume that, for the time being, the goddess had set aside her long enmity of Rome, mollified by an attractive new home.

  The city became completely uninhabited, as a first-century poet lamented: “How sad, ancient Veii! You were once a mighty kingdom and a throne of gold was set in your market place. Now inside your walls the shepherd loiters and sounds his horn. Men reap cornfields above your graves.”

  The Romans were hugely proud of their victory. Claiming that the siege had lasted ten years, they presented the long campaign against Veii as their version of the Trojan War. And, strategically, it was indeed a great achievement. It signaled the weakening of Etruscan power and the emergence of Rome as the leading state in central Italy. There was also a large domestic benefit. Allotments of the ager Veientanus were distributed to Roman citizens, alleviating plebeian claims of poverty and perhaps helping, at least for now, to mitigate the problem of indebtedness.

  But, as so often happens, pride was followed by a fall—in fact, not to put too fine a point on it, the fall of Rome itself. Even Livy, who loyally took the edge off every Roman misfortune, admitted, “Calamity of unprecedented magnitude was drawing near.”

  IN 390, A rumor spread that a vast horde of barbarians was moving down Italy—with what purpose in mind nobody knew, but everyone agreed that they posed a terrible threat. For two centuries and more, Celtic tribes had overflowed from their heartlands in central Europe and Asia, crossed the Alps, and (as already noted) poured down into northern Italy, where they settled, and looked covetously at the lands of their southern neighbor, the Etruscan Empire.

  The civilized world—that is to say, the Greeks and their admirers the Romans—did not know what to make of these rough, unpredictable tribesmen. The usually reliable Polybius, a Greek who spent much of his life in Rome, wrote:

  [They] had no knowledge of the refinements of civilization. They lived in unwalled villages, without any unnecessary furniture. They slept on straw and leaves, ate meat and practised no other pursuits but war and agriculture, so their lives were very simple and they were completely unacquainted with any art or science. Their possessions consisted of cattle and gold, since these were the only objects which they could easily take with them whatever their circumstances and transport wherever they chose. They placed a high value on comradeship, and the man who was believed to have the greatest number of dependants and companions about him was the most feared and the most powerful member of the tribe.

  The Celts, or (as the Romans liked to call them) the Gauls, were usually tall, well-built, and blond. They wore their hair long, whitening and stiffening it by frequent washing in limewater. They then pulled it back over the head so that the general effect was of a horse’s mane. They let their mustaches grow over their lips so that “when drinking the beverage passes, as it were, through a kind of strainer.” It is reported that male homosexuality was very common, and that men particularly liked to have two boys at a time in bed with them: “Young men offer themselves to strangers and are insulted if the offer is refused.” Women, too, enjoyed considerable sexual freedom, and were entitled to divorce husbands who failed to perform their marital duties. Unlike Greek or Roman women, they played a respected part in public life, acting as ambassadors and, on occasion, fighting in battles.

  The Celts were undisciplined, gorged themselves on food and drink, and were always quarreling with one another. Politically they seemed to be fickle and inconsistent; they found it difficult to take a long-term view and stick to it.

  It is hard to know how much weight to place on these accounts, for we have no counterbalancing records from the Celts themselves. Taken as a whole, the portrait of a race of noble savages is coherent, but we must not forget that it reflects the fears of the observer as much as it does the quality of life as experienced by a Celt. It is telling that the Greco-Roman authors pay no attention whatsoever to the extraordinary skill and beauty of Celtic metalwork and crafts.

  What is certainly the case is that the Celts were fine warriors and knew how to frighten an enemy army out of its wits. Completely fearless, they rushed naked into battle, with their long hair streaming and strange war cries, accompanied by harsh trumpet blasts. Their cavalry rode with iron horseshoes, a military innovation, and the infantry carried finely tempered slashing broadswords. The Celts were able to muster very large forces and were hard to defeat. The news of their imminent arrival in central Italy was seen, rightly, as an emergency order.

  Myriad warriors and even greater numbers of women and children arrived before Clusium, an important Etruscan city and once Lars Porsenna’s base. A foolish story is told that they were tempted there with a promise of Clusium’s large supplies of wine, and that, responding to an appeal from the city, the Romans sent some ambassadors, who met and remonstrated unsuccessfully with the Celtic king, Brennus. The ambassadors then fought alongside the army of Clusium in a vain attempt to repulse the Celts. This broke the principle of diplomatic neutrality, and infuriated Brennus, who ordered a retaliatory march on Rome, only eighty miles away.

  What really seems to have happened is that Brennus led a band of marauders intent on plunder, not a people in search of Lebensraum. It is very possible that they were in the pay of the turannos of Syracuse, Dionysius, whose principal aim in these years was to undermine Rome’s ally, the Etruscan trading entrepôt of Caere, and the Greek cities of Magna Graecia. If that was so, the Celts were passing through on their way to southern Italy.

  The Romans may have sent an advance force north to discover the truth behind the reports of a Celtic advance, but what is certain is that a hastily assembled Roman army confronted the invaders in a great battle at the little river Allia, a tributary of the Tiber. The numbers on each side are uncertain, but perhaps two legions, or about ten thousand Romans faced thirty thousand Celts. To avoid being outflanked, the Roman commander stretched his line out, but too thinly. Presumably, the well-to-do heavily armed legionaries were posted in the center, with the poorer citizens as light-armed troops on each wing. The center could not hold, fractured, and gave way.

  It should have been a rout with high casualties, but Brennus had expected a larger enemy army. Suspecting an ambush, he held his men back. Many Romans were able to get away, and a good number escaped to nearby Veii, whose citadel was eminently defensible.

  However, the way to Rome lay open.

  LIVY DESCRIBES WHAT happened next in one of his great set pieces. It was a mark either of overconfidence or carelessness or both that Rome was not encircled by a protective wall. Earthen ramparts and hills were deemed a sufficient defense. Even worse, most of the army was either dead or cowering in the ruins of Veii. The city was undefended. There was nothing to stop Brennus from marching in and giving the Romans the treatment they had meted out to the people of Veii.

  The Celts could hardly believe their eyes and, once again, feared a trap. They watched and waited until evening fell. Inside the beleaguered city, the most was made of a night’s reprieve. The handful of remaining troops took up position on the Capitol, where they should be able to hold out indefinitely. Civilians were allowed to take refuge there, too, but many others, especially of the poorer sort, poured out of the city gates across the wooden bridge, the Pons Sublicius, to the Janiculum Hill and vanished into the countryside. Vesta was goddess of the civic hearth and guarantor of Rome’s permanence. Her priestesses, who were vowed to chastity, the Vestal Virgins, debated what to do with the sacred emblems. It was decided to bury those that could not be moved and to travel with the remainder to the friendly Etruscan city of Caere. The Vestal Virgins’ main task was to tend the goddess’s eternal flame, and presumably they took it with them in the shape of a torch or a brazier. Abandoning their native land, they set off on foot but were given a lift by a patriotic carter. R
ome was dead.

  With morning came the Celts. The citadel was now safe, but, rather than hide away, senators decided to consecrate themselves to the underworld and death in a strange ritual called devotio (whence, in passing, our word devotion). The sacrifice of their lives would bring the same devotio onto the heads of their enemies—in other words, it would consecrate the Celts to their destruction, too. Only a current holder of state authority (a consul, say) could devote himself, but a former public official could regain his imperium by the ritual gesture of clasping his chin. The senators went home and dressed themselves in their old robes of office. They sat quietly, awaiting their fate in the courtyards of their houses.

  The porta Collina, the Colline Gate, at the northern tip of the city, had been left open, and it was here that the Celtic invaders made their entry. They proceeded coolly and calmly down the long, straight street that led from the gate to the foot of the Capitol and then the Forum. They wandered around the square, gazing at the temples and the citadel. After sightseeing, they fanned out through the city in search of booty. To their surprise, they found that while the dwellings of the poor were locked and barred, the mansions of the rich lay unprotected.

  They were startled by the senators, sitting stock-still, and one Celt touched the beard of a certain Marcus Papirius, thus interrupting the ritual devotio gesture. The offended Papirius at once hit the man on the head with his ivory staff. The furious Celt butchered him on the spot, and the other senators soon met the same fate. The devotio was complete.

  Looting now began in earnest. Houses were ransacked and set on fire. Many public and private records were consumed in the conflagration, greatly hindering the work of Roman historians like Livy. But the citadel held out. The Celts settled down for a siege.

  CAMILLUS WAS NURSING mixed feelings. The victor of Veii had been sent into exile because of a disagreement over distribution of the booty. Sensing that he had become old and useless, he seethed with resentment at his lot. He lodged in a small town not far from Rome and watched events from an impotent distance.

  Some lucky star brought Celtic raiders to his vicinity, for it aroused his patriotic wrath and he led the townsfolk in a successful sortie. News of this small victory spread quickly. At Veii, the site of his most famous exploit, the Roman soldiery were coming to regret Camillus’s absence, and after consultation with the Senate he was recalled to become dictator for the second time, the Republic’s fatalis dux (its predestined leader), and resume command of the army.

  He was lucky not to have arrived too late, for the Capitol very nearly fell to the invaders. What happened was one of the most delightful stories of Roman history. The Celts noticed that the rocky ascent up the hill from where the Temple of Carmenta, the goddess of childbirth, stood could be easily climbed. One starlit night, an unarmed man was sent to reconnoiter the route and a scaling party followed after him. Although it was a scramble, they made it to the top of the cliff not far from the huge Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest. The Roman guards heard nothing, and sleeping dogs lay undisturbed.

  Livy continues the narrative:

  It was the geese that saved them—Juno’s sacred geese, which in spite of the dearth of provisions had not been killed. The cackling of the birds and the clapping of their wings awoke Marcus Manlius—a distinguished officer who had been Consul three years before—and he, seizing his sword and giving the alarm, hurried, without waiting for the support of his bewildered colleagues, straight to the point of danger. One Celt was already up, but Manlius with a blow from the boss of his shield toppled him headlong down the cliff. The falling body carried others with it: many more who dropped their weapons to get a better grip of the rocks were killed by Manlius, and soon more Roman troops were on the scene, tumbling the climbers down with javelins and stones, until every man of them was dislodged and sent hurtling to the bottom of the cliff.

  Time passed slowly in the heat of summer. Good hygiene was always difficult to maintain in an ancient army, and an infection spread through the Celtic camp. The invaders lost the energy to burn corpses separately at individual funerals and piled them up in heaps for mass cremation in the Forum Boarium, near the city end of the Pons Sublicius. As late as Livy’s day, the spot was still known as Busta Gallica, or the Celtic Pyres.

  As for the defenders on the Capitol, time was no less an enemy. In their case, the challenge was hunger rather than disease. They disguised their shortage of supplies by flinging loaves of bread down into the Celtic outposts. But hope as well as food was beginning to fail. Men were hardly strong enough for guard duty. If only Camillus would arrive soon and relieve the city. But although he was believed to be near at hand, there was neither sight nor sound of him.

  Brennus let it be known that he and his horde would abandon Rome for no very great sum of money. So the Senate met and authorized the military tribunes to arrange the terms. A price—a thousand pounds of gold—was agreed. Livy writes:

  Insult was added to what was already sufficiently disgraceful, for the weights which the Celts brought for weighing the metal were heavier than standard, and when the Roman commander objected the insolent barbarian flung his sword onto the scale, uttering words intolerable to Roman ears: “Woe to the vanquished”—vae victis.

  At the eleventh hour, Camillus turned up at the head of his army. He ordered the gold to be removed and the Celts to leave. As he was dictator, the military tribunes had lost their imperium and their entente with Brennus was null and void. A confused engagement followed, and the surprised Celts withdrew from Rome. A more regular battle was fought eight miles or so east of Rome, on the road to the town of Praeneste. The Celts had had time to reorganize themselves, but for all that the omnicompetent Camillus was again victorious. The Gallic camp was captured and the army annihilated. The greatest danger in which the Republic had ever found itself had passed.

  THIS EXCITING NARRATIVE is a blend of fact and fiction. The basic theme, the sack of Rome by the Celts, is indisputable. The humiliation was never forgotten, and Brennus’s proud taunt, vae victis, was an indelible affront. Worse, the barbarians may have gone, but not forever.

  For many generations, they remained just beyond the range of peripheral vision, their possible return an abiding nightmare. And, as we shall see, from time to time throughout the history of the Republic the Celts did march down again into the peaceful Italian peninsula. During the prolonged death throes of the Roman Empire many hundreds of years later, successive waves of barbarians followed one after another, and in the fifth century A.D. the much feared calamity occurred. Rome was sacked for a second time, at the hands of a new Brennus—king of the Visigoths, the fearsome Alaric. It would not be long thereafter before the Western Empire itself collapsed.

  Elements of the story are not to be trusted, though. The exile of Camillus was probably an invention, to give him an alibi during the sack. His final victory over the Celts and the saving of the gold sound very much like false excuses. We may guess that in fact the invaders left at their leisure, with the classical equivalent of Danegeld in their pockets. Polybius says that “at that moment an invasion of their own territory by the Veneti [a tribe in the area where today’s Venice is located] diverted their attention, and so they made a treaty with the Romans, handed back the city and returned home.”

  It took a surprisingly short time for Rome to recover. Having your city looted and burned is obviously a cataclysm. It is reported that some traditional enemies—the Etruscans, the Aequi, and the Volsci—tried their luck and attacked Rome when it was down, but to little effect. Some members of the Latin League suspended or abandoned their alliance with Rome, which dominated the federation. The fact that the city still had most of its army intact, and that Veii and its territory remained in the Republic’s hands, was of far greater importance. New grants of citizenship were awarded to people in the Veii region and in two neighboring towns. Land was distributed to Roman citizens, and in 387 four new tribes were created in the newly conquered territory. None of these mea
sures sound like the actions of a state in crisis.

  As for the Celts, they had not disappeared, but it was thirty years before they returned. By that time Rome had fully reestablished its power. The city was quickly, although haphazardly, rebuilt. According to Livy:

  All work was hurried and nobody bothered to see that the streets were straight. Individual property rights were ignored and buildings went up wherever there was room for them. This explains why the ancient sewers, which originally followed the line of the streets, now run in many places under private houses, and the general layout of Rome is more like a squatter’s settlement than a properly planned city.

  Greater efficiency marked the building of a wall around the city’s perimeter to insure against another invasion. Its circuit ran for about seven miles, longer than the earlier earthworks. In later times, as we have seen, it was attributed to King Servius Tullius, but in fact work began in 378. Up to twenty-four feet high and twelve feet wide, the wall consisted of large rectangular blocks of tufa from the annexed quarries of Veii. On a plateau running southward behind three of the city’s hills—the Quirinal, the Viminal, and the Esquiline—the wall gave way to a vast earthen rampart, revetted with stone, which stood behind a ditch 100 feet wide and 30 feet deep. This ambitious and costly enterprise was funded by an unpopular tax, which bore down heavily on the poor, but once complete Rome was as good as impregnable.

  These great Servian fortifications survive in part to this day, but they long ago lost their defensive importance. By the first century, suburbs extended far beyond them, “giving the beholder the impression of a city stretching out indefinitely.” The walls themselves, smothered by buildings, became almost invisible.