armies were sent against them both, commanded by friends of the
plebeians. Lucius Sicinius Dentatus, one of the bravest, was sent out
at the head of one army with some traitors, who, under orders from the
decemvirs, murdered him in a lonely place. The other commander was
Lucius Virginius, who will be known as long as literature lasts as
father of the beautiful but unfortunate Virginia. While Virginius was
fighting the city's war against the Æquians, the tyrant Appius was
plotting to snatch from him his beloved daughter, who was affianced to
the tribune Lucius Icilius, the same who had caused the Aventine to be
assigned to the plebeians. At first wicked Appius endeavored to entice
the maiden from her noble lover, but without success; and he therefore
determined to take her by an act of tyranny, under color of law. He
caused one of his minions to claim her as his slave, intending to get
her into his hands before her father could hear of the danger and
return from the army. The attempt was not successful, for trusty
friends carried the news quickly, and Virginius reached Rome in time to
hear the cruel sentence by which the tyrant thought to gratify his evil
intention. Before Virginia could be taken from the forum, Virginius
drew her aside, suddenly snatched a sharp knife from a butcher's stall,
and plunged it in her bosom, crying out: "This is the only way, my
child, to keep thee free!" Then, turning to Appius, he held the bloody
knife on high and cried: "On thy head be the curse of this blood."
Vainly did Appius call upon the crowd to arrest the infuriated father;
the people stood aside to allow him to pass, as though he had been
something holy, and he rushed onward toward his portion of the army,
which was soon joined by the troops that Dentatus had commanded.
Meantime, Icilius held up the body of his loved one before the people
in the forum, and bade them gaze on the work of their decemvir. A
tumult was quickly stirred up, in the midst of which Appius fled to his
house, and the senate, hastily summoned, cast about for means to stop
the wild indignation of the exasperated populace; for the people were
then, as they are now, always powerful in the strength of outraged
feeling or righteous indignation.
All was vain. The two armies returned to the Aventine united, and from
the other parts of the city the plebeians flocked to them. This was the
second secession, and, like the first, it was successful. The decemvirs
were compelled to resign, their places being filled by two consuls;
Appius was thrown into prison, to await judgment, and took his life
there; and ten tribunes of the people were chosen to look out for the
interests of the commons, Virginius and Icilius being two of the
number. Thus, for the first time since the days of Publius Valerius,
the control of government was in the hands of men who wished to carry
it on for the good of the country, rather than in the interest of a
party. Thus good came out of evil.
Among the laws of the Twelve Tables, the particular one which had at
this time excited the plebeians was a statute prohibiting marriages
between members of their order and the patricians. There had been such
marriages, and this made the opposition to the law all the more bitter,
though no one was powerful enough to cause it to be abolished. There
now arose a tribune of the people who possessed force and persistence,
Caius Canuleius by name, and he urged the repeal of this law. For the
third time the plebeians seceded, this time going over the Tiber to the
Janiculum Hill, where it would have been possible for them to begin a
new city, if they had not been propitiated. Canuleius argued with vigor
against the consuls who stood up for the law, and at last he succeeded.
In the year 445 the restriction was removed, and plebeian girls were at
liberty to become the wives of patrician men, with the assurance that
their children should enjoy the rank of their fathers. This right of
intermarriage led in time to the entrance of plebeians upon the highest
magistracies of the city, and it was, therefore, of great political
importance.
It was agreed in 444 B.C. that the supreme authority should be centred
in two magistrates, called Military Tribunes, who should have the power
of consuls, and might be chosen from the two orders. The following
year, however (443 B.C.), the patricians were allowed to choose from
their own order two officers known as Censors, who were always
considered to outrank all others, excepting the dictator, when there
was one of those extraordinary magistrates. The censors wore rich robes
of scarlet, and had almost kingly dignity. They made the register of
the citizens at the time of the census, [Footnote: After the expulsion
of the Tarquins, the consuls took the census, and this was the first
appointment of special officers for the purpose.] administered the
public finances, and chose the members of the senate, besides
exercising many other important duties connected with public and
private life. The term of office of the censors at first was a lustrum
or five years, but ten years later it was limited to eighteen months.
In 421, the plebeians made further progress, for the office of quæstor
(paymaster) was opened to them, and they thus became eligible to the
senate. A score of years passed, however, before any plebeian was
actually chosen to the office of military tribune even, owing to the
great influence of the patricians in the comitia centuriata.
All the time that these events were occurring, Rome was carrying on
intermittent wars with the surrounding nations, and by her own efforts,
as well as by the help of her allies, was adding to her warlike
prestige. Nothing in all the story of war exceeds in interest the
poetical narrative that relates to the siege and fall of the Etruscan
city of Veii, with which, since the days of Romulus, Rome had so many
times been involved in war.
Year after year the army besieged the strong place, and there seemed no
hope that its walls would fall. It was allied with Fidenæ, another city
halfway between it and Rome, which was taken by means of a mine in the
year 426. A peace with Veii ensued, after which the incessant war began
again, and fortune sometimes favored one side and sometimes the other.
The siege of the city can be fittingly compared to that of Troy, Seven
years had passed without result, when of a sudden, in the midst of an
autumn drought, the waters of the Alban Lake, away off to the other
side of Rome, began to rise. Higher and still higher they rose without
any apparent cause, until the fields and houses were covered, and then
they found a passage where the hills were lowest, and poured down in a
great torrent upon the plains below. Unable to understand this portent,
for such it was considered, the Romans called upon the oracle at Delphi
for counsel, and were told that not until the waters should find their
way into the lowlands by a new channel, should not rush so impetuously
to the sea, but should water the country, could Veii be taken. It is
hardly necessary to say that no one but an oracle or a poet could see
the connection between the draining of a lake fifteen miles from Rome
on one side, and the capture of a fortress ten miles away on the other.
However, the lake was drained. With surprising skill, a tunnel was
built directly through the rocky hills, and the waters allowed to flow
over the fields below. The traveller may still see this ancient
structure performing its old office. It is cut for a mile and a half,
mainly through solid rock, four feet wide and from seven to ten in
height. The lake is a thousand feet above the sea-level, and of very
great depth.
Marcus Furius Camillus is the hero who now comes to the rescue. He was
chosen dictator in order that he might push the war with the utmost
vigor. The people of Veii sent messengers to him to sue for peace, but
their appeal was in vain. Steadily the siege went on. We must not
picture to ourselves the army of Camillus using the various engines of
war that the Romans became acquainted with in later times through
intercourse with the Greeks, but trusting more to their strong arms and
their simple means of undermining the walls or breaking down the gates.
Their bows and slings and ladders were weak instruments against strong
stone walls, and the siege was a long and wearisome labor. It proved so
long in this case, indeed, that the soldiers, unable to make visits to
their homes to plant and reap their crops, were for the first time paid
for their services.
As the unsuccessful ambassadors from Veii turned away from the senate-
house, one of them uttered a fearful prophecy, saying that though the
unmerciful Romans feared neither the wrath of the gods nor the
vengeance of men, they should one day be rewarded for their hardness by
the loss of their own country.
Summer and winter the Roman army camped before the doomed city, but it
did not fall. At last, to ensure success, Camillus began a mine or
tunnel under the city, which he completed to a spot just beneath the
altar in the temple of Juno. When but a single stone remained to be
taken away, he uttered a fervent prayer to the goddess, and made a vow
to Apollo consecrating a tenth part of the spoil of the city to him. He
then ordered an assault upon the walls, and at the moment when the king
was making an offering on the altar of Juno, and the augur was telling
him that victory in the contest was to fall to him who should burn the
entrails then ready, the Romans burst from their tunnel, finished the
sacrifice, and rushing to the gates, let their own army in. The city
was sacked, and as Camillus looked on, he exclaimed: "What man's
fortune was ever so great as mine?" A magnificent triumph was
celebrated in Rome. Day after day the temples were crowded, and
Camillus, hailed as a public benefactor, rode to the capitol in a
chariot drawn by four white horses. The territory of the conquered city
was divided among the patricians, but Camillus won their hatred after a
time by calling upon them to give up a tenth part of their rich booty
to found a temple to Apollo, in pursuance of his vow, which he claimed
to have forgotten meanwhile. It was not long before he was accused of
unfairness in distributing the spoils, some of which he was said to
have retained himself, and when he saw that the people were so incensed
at him that condemnation was inevitable, he went into banishment. As he
went away, he added a malediction to the prophecy of the ambassador
from Veii, and said that the republic might soon have cause to regret
his loss. He was, as he had expected, condemned, a fine of one hundred
and fifty thousand ases being laid upon him.
Thus was the territory of Rome greatly increased, after a hundred years
of war and intrigue, and thus did the warrior to whom the city owed the
most, and whom it had professed to honor, go from it with a malediction
on his lips. Let us see how the ill omens were fulfilled.
VIII.
A BLAST FROM BEYOND THE NORTH-WIND.
When the Greeks shivered in the cold north-wind, they thought that
Boreas, one of their divinities who dwelt beyond the high mountains,
had loosened the blast from a mysterious cave. The North was to them an
unknown region. Far beyond the hills they thought there dwelt a nation
known as Hyperboreans, or people beyond the region of Boreas, who lived
in an atmosphere of feathers, enjoying Arcadian happiness, and
stretching their peaceful lives out to a thousand years. That which is
unknown is frightful to the ignorant or the superstitious, and so it
was that the North was a land in which all that was alarming might be
conjured up. The inhabitants of the Northern lands were called Gauls by
the Romans. They lived in villages with no walls about them, and had no
household furniture; they slept in straw, or leaves, or grass, and
their business in life was either agriculture or war. They were hardy,
tall, and rough in appearance; their hair was shaggy and light in color
compared with that of the Italians, and their fierce appearance struck
the dwellers under sunnier climes with dread.
These warlike people had come from the plains of Asia, and in Central
and Northern Europe had increased to such an extent that they could at
length find scarcely enough pasturage for their flocks. The mountains
were full of them, and it was not strange that some looked down from
their summits into the rich plains of Italy, and then went thither;
and, tempted by the crops, so much more abundant than they had ever
known, and by the wine, which gave them a new sensation, at last made
their homes there. It was a part of their life to be on the move, and
by degrees they slipped farther and farther into the pleasant land.
They flocked from the Hercynian forests, away off in Bohemia or
Hungary, and swarmed over the Alps; they followed the river Po in its
course, and they came into the region of the Apennines too. [Footnote:
No one knows exactly when the Gauls first entered Northern Italy. Some
think that it was as long back as the time of the Tarquins, while
others put it only ten or twenty years before the battle of the Allia--
410-400 B.C.] It was they who had weakened the Etruscans and made it
possible for the Romans to capture Veii. Afterwards they came before
the city of Clusium (B.C. 391), and the people in distress begged for
aid from Rome. No help was given, but ambassadors were sent to warn the
invaders courteously not to attack the friends of the Roman people who
had done them no harm. Such a request might have had an effect upon a
nation that knew the Romans better, but the fierce Northerners who knew
nothing of courtesy replied that if the Clusians would peaceably give
up a portion of their lands, no harm should befall them; but that
otherwise they should be attacked, and that in the presence of the
Romans, who might thus take home an account of how the Gauls excelled
all other mortals in bravery. Upon being asked by what right they
proposed to take a part of the Clusian territory, Brennus, the leader
of the barbarians, replied that all things belonged to the brave, and
that their right lay in their trusty swords.
In the battle that ensued, the Roman ambassadors fought with the
Clusians, and one of them killed a Gaul of great size and stature. This
was made the basis for an onset upon Rome itself. Then the Romans must
have remembered how just before the hero of Veii had gone into
banishment, a good and respectable man reported to the military
tribunes that one night as he was going along the street near the
temple of Vesta, he heard a voice saying plainly to him: "Marcus
Cædicius, the Gauls are coming!" Probably they remembered, too, how
lightly they esteemed the information, and how even the tribunes made
sport of it. Now the Northern scourge was actually rushing down upon
them, and Camillus was gone! In great rage the invaders pushed on
towards the city, alarming all who came in their way by their numbers,
their fierceness, and the violence with which they swept away all
opposition. There was little need of fear, however, for the rough men
took nothing from the fields, and, as they passed the cities, cried out
that they were on their way to Rome, and that they considered the
inhabitants of all cities but Rome friends who should receive no harm.
The Romans had a proverb to the effect that whom the gods wish to
destroy they first make mad, and, according to their historian Livy, it
was true in this case, for when the city was thus menaced by a new
enemy, rushing in the intoxication of victory and impelled by the fury
of wrath and the thirst for vengeance, they did not take any but the
most ordinary precautions to protect themselves; leaving to the usual
officers the direction of affairs, and not bestirring themselves as
much as they did when threatened by the comparatively inferior forces
of the neighboring states. They even neglected the prescribed religious
customs and the simplest precautions of war. When they sent out their
army they did not select a fit place for a camp, nor build ramparts
behind which they might retreat, and they drew up the soldiers in such
a way that the line was unusually weak in the parts it presented to the
on-rushing enemy.
Under such unpropitious circumstances the impetuous Gauls were met on
the banks of the river Allia, ten miles from Rome, on the very day on
which the Fabii had been destroyed by the Etruscans the century before
(July 16, 390). The result was that terror took possession of the
soldiers, and the Gauls achieved an easy victory, so easy, indeed, that
it left them in a state of stupefied surprise. A part of the Romans
fled to the deserted stronghold of Veii, and others to their own city,
but many were overtaken by the enemy and killed, or were swept away by
the current of the Tiber. [Footnote: That this was a terrible defeat is
proved by the fact that the sixteenth of July was afterward held
unlucky (_ater,_ black), and no business was transacted on it.
Ovid mentions it as "the day to which calamitous Allia gives a name in
the calendar," and on which "tearful Allia was stained with the blood
of the Latian wounds."]
There was dire alarm in the city. The young and vigorous members of the
senate, with their wives and children and other citizens, found refuge
in the capitol, which they fortified; but the aged senators took their
seats in the forum and solemnly awaited the coming of Brennus and his
hosts. The barbarians found, of course, no difficulty in taking and
burning the city, and for days they sacked and pillaged the houses. The
venerable senators were immediately murdered, and the invaders put the
capitol in a state of siege.
Then the curses of the ambassador of Veii and of Camillus found their
fulfilment; and then also did the thoughts of the Romans turn to their
once admired commander, who, they were now sure, could help them. The
refugees at Veii, too, turned in their thoughts to Camillus, and
messengers were sent to him at Ardea, where he was in exile, asking him
to come to the assistance of his distressed countrymen. Camillus was
too proud to accept a command to which he was not called by the senate,
while he was under condemnation for an offence of which he did not feel
guilty. The senate was shut up in the capitol, and hard to get at, but
an ambitious youth offered to climb the precipitous hill, in spite of
the besieging barbarians, and obtain the requisite order. The daring
man crossed the Tiber, and scaled the hill by the help of shrubs and
projecting stones. After obtaining for Camillus the appointment of
dictator, he successfully returned to Veii, and then the banished
leader accepted the supreme office for the second time.
The sharp watchers among the Gauls had, however, noticed in the broken
shrubs and loosened stones the marks of the daring act of the messenger
who had climbed the hill, and determined to take the hint and enter the
capitol in that way themselves. In the dead of night, but by the bright
light of the moon we may suppose, since the battle of Allia was fought
at the full of the moon, the daring barbarians began slowly and with
great difficulty to climb the rocky hill. They actually reached its
summit, and, to their surprise, were not noisy enough to awaken the
guards; but, alas for them, the sacred geese of the capitol, kept for
use in the worship of Juno, were confined near the spot where the
ascent had been made. Alarmed by the unusual occurrence, the geese
uttered their natural noises and awakened Marcus Manlius, who quickly
buckled on his armor and rushed to the edge of the cliff. He was just
in time to meet the first Gaul as he came up, and to push him over on
the others who were painfully following him. Down he fell backwards,
striking his companions and sending them one after another to the foot
of the precipice in promiscuous ruin. In the morning the captain of the
watch was in turn cast down upon the heads of the enemies, to whom his
neglect had given such an advantage.
Now there remained nothing for the Gauls to do but sit down and wait,
to see if they could starve the Romans confined in the capitol. Months
passed, and, indeed, they almost accomplished their object, but while
they were listlessly waiting, the hot Roman autumn was having its
natural effect upon them, accustomed as they were to an active life in
those Northern woods where the cool winds of the mountains fanned them
and the leafy shades screened their heads from the heat of the sun. The
miasma of the low lands crept up into their camps, and the ashes of the
ruins that they had made blew into their faces and affected their
health. They might almost as well have been shut up on the hill. The
result was that both Gaul and Roman felt at last that peace would be a
boon no matter at how high a price purchased, and it was agreed by
Brennus that if the Romans would weigh him out a thousand pounds of
rich gold, he would take himself and his horde back to the more
comfortable woods. The scales were prepared and the gold was brought
out, but the Romans found that their enemies were cheating in the
weight. When asked what it meant, Brennus pulled off his heavy sword,
threw it into the balances and said: "What does it mean, but woe to the
vanquished!" "_Væ victis!_"
It was very bad for the Romans, but the story goes on to tell us that
at that very moment, the great Camillus was knocking at the gates, that
he entered at the right instant with his army, took the gold out of the
scales, threw the weights, and the scales themselves, indeed, to the
Gauls, and told Brennus that it was the custom of the Romans to pay
their debts in iron, not in gold. The Gauls immediately called their
men together and hastened from the city, establishing a camp eight
miles away on the road to Gabii, where Camillus overtook them the next
day and defeated them with such great slaughter that they were able to
do no further damage.
[Illustration: THE CAPITOL RESTORED.]
It seems a pity to spoil so good a story, but it is like many others
that have grown up in the way that reminds one of the game of "scandal"
that the children play. The Roman historians always wished to glorify
their nation, and they took every opportunity to make the stories
appear well for the old heroes. It seems that at this time some Gauls
were really cut off by the people of Cære, or some neighboring place,
and, to improve the story, it was at first said that they were the very
ones that had taken Rome. Then, another writer added, that the gold
given as a ransom for the city was retaken with the captives; and, as
another improvement, it was said that Camillus was the one who
accomplished the feat, but that it was a long time afterwards, when the
Gauls were besieging another city. The last step in adding to the story
was taken when some one, thinking that it could be improved still more,
and the national pride satisfied, brought Camillus into the city at the
very moment that the gold was in the scales, so that he could keep it
from being delivered at all, and then proceed to cut off all the enemy,
so that not a man should be left to take the terrible tale back over
the northern mountains! The story is not all false, for there are good
evidences that Rome was burned, but the heroic embellishments are
doubtless the imaginative and patriotic additions of historians who
thought more of national pride than historic accuracy.
Camillus now proceeded to rebuild the city, and came to be honored as
the second founder of Rome. The suffering people rushed out of the
capitol weeping for very joy; the inhabitants who had gone elsewhere
came back; the priests brought the holy things from their hiding-
places; the city was purified; a temple was speedily erected to Rumor
or Voice on the spot where Cædicius had heard the voice announcing the
coming barbarians; and there was a diligent digging among the ashes to
find the sites of the other temples and streets. It was a tedious and
almost hopeless task to rebuild the broken-down city, and the people
began to look with longing to the strongly-built houses and temples
still standing at Veii, wondering why they might not go thither in a
body and live in comfort, instead of digging among ashes to rebuild a
city simply to give Camillus, of whom they quickly began to be jealous,
the honor that had been an attribute of Romulus only. Then the senate
appealed to the memories of the olden time; the stories of the sacred
places, and especially of the head that was found on the Capitoline
Hill, were retold, and by dint of entreaty and expostulation the
distressed inhabitants were led to go to work to patch up the ruins.
They brought stones from Veii, and to the poor the authorities granted
bricks, and gradually a new, but ill-built, city grew up among the
ruins, with crooked streets and lanes, and with buildings, public and
private, huddled together just as happened to be the most convenient
for the immediate occasion.
Camillus lived twenty-five years longer, and was repeatedly called to
the head of affairs, as the city found itself in danger from the
Volscians, Æquians, Etruscans and other envious enemies. Six times was
he made one of the tribunes, and five times did he hold the office of
dictator. When the Gauls came again, in the year 367, Camillus was
called upon to help his countrymen for the last time, and though he was
some fourscore years of age, he did not hesitate, nor did victory
desert him. The Gauls were defeated with great slaughter, and it was a
long time before they again ventured to trouble the Romans. The second
founder of Rome, after his long life of warfare, died of a plague that
carried away many of the prominent citizens in the year 365. His
victories had not all been of the same warlike sort, however. "Peace
hath her victories no less renowned than war," and Camillus gained his
share of them.