A similar remark applies to the national honour paid to the goose. It must moreover be admitted that if Crassus, in 65 B.C., found 2000 pounds of gold, under the statue of the Capitoline Jupiter, in the place where tradition affirmed it to have been deposited by Camillus, this fact affords a confirmation of his recovery, in some manner, of the ransom or plunder from the Gauls.

Everything which concerns the Gallic gold is however in a state of confusion and obscurity. Livy first states that this gold had been collected from various temples: but he adds, that when the quantity in the public treasury was insufficient, the matrons contributed their golden ornaments, in order that the sacred gold might not be violated:(11) whereas a few lines before he had stated that the gold was taken from the temples. He afterwards mentions that the Etruscan prisoners sold after the war of 389 B.C. produced so much money, that the matrons were repaid for their gold, and that with the surplus three golden pateræ were made, which, before the burning of the Capitol in 83 B.C., were to be seen in the cell of Jupiter, at the feet of the statue of Juno, inscribed with the name of Camillus. (182) A few years later, however, Manlius is represented as complaining that the Gallic gold was concealed, or embezzled, by the patricians. 'It seemed a monstrous wrong (says Livy) that the gold which had been raised by a general property-tax for the Gallic ransom, should now, when it had been re-taken from the enemy, be plundered by a few persons.'(13) In the former passage, nothing was said of a general tax; and it is equally difficult to understand how the Romans enclosed in the Capitol could, after the burning of the city and the dispersion of the population, have either obtained golden ornaments from the matrons or levied a

religiosus, p. 278. The reason for the religious observance of the three days on which the mundus remained open, is explained by Festus in mundus, p. 154. He there says: Itaque per eos dies non cum hoste manus conserebant, non exercitus scribebatur, non comitia habebantur, non aliud quicquam in republicâ nisi quod ultima necessitas admonebat, administrabatur.' Compare above, vol. i. p. 102.

(181) v. 50. The contribution of the matrons on this occasion is likewise mentioned by Diod. xiv. 117. (183) vi. 14.

(182) vi. 4.

general tax upon the citizens. There is likewise another story connected with this gold; namely, that a portion of it was contributed by the Massilians, who received the intelligence of the burning of Rome by the Gauls from some ambassadors who heard of the event on their way home from Delphi.(184) We must however suppose the negotiation about the gold to have been long pending, in order that this assistance should have been possible. If we adopt the account of Polybius as historical, the Capitol was saved by the bravery of its defenders, and the Gauls, after several months' occupation of Rome, voluntarily returned home, where they arrived safely, carrying with them all their booty. This version of the transaction leaves no room for any important action of Camillus, and in this respect it differs not only from the traditional account of the Romans, who, for his services on this occasion, called him their second Romulus, but also from the report of Aristotle, who, writing about half a century after the event, attributed the salvation of Rome from the Gauls to a certain Lucius. Plutarch assumes as manifest that the great Camillus, whose prænomen was Marcus, is the person alluded to by Aristotle. Niebuhr however thinks that Lucius Camillus, who is said to have defeated the Gauls, in the Pomptine territory, in 349 B.C., is the person intended. (185) This

(184) Partâ pace, et securitate fundatâ, revertentes a Delphis Massiliensium legati, quo missi munera Apollini tulerant, audierunt urbem Romanam a Gallis captam incensamque. Quam rem domi nunciatam publico funere Massilienses prosecuti sunt; aurumque et argentum publicum privatumque contulerunt, ad explendum pondus Gallis, a quibus redemtam pacem cognoverant. Ob quod meritum et immunitas illis decreta, et locus spectaculorum in senatu datus, et fœdus æquo jure percussum; Justin, xliii. 5.

(185) Hist. vol. iii. p. 80. Compare Livy, vii. 26. It is the battle to which the single combat of Valerius Corvus with the Gaul is referred. It may be observed that this battle is not recognised by Polybius, in his historical sketch of the Gallic irruptions into Italy. See below, p. 406. L. Camillus, the son of M. Camillus, first appears in the Fasti as dictator in 350 B.C., forty years after the burning of the city, and fifteen years after his father's death. He is however mentioned by Plut. Cam. 35, as serving under his father the year after the capture of the city. The victory of L. Camillus, to which Niebuhr supposes Aristotle to allude, took place in 319 B.C., forty-one years after the capture of the city, when Aristotle had reached the age of thirty-five; whereas the capture of the city was six years before his birth. It seems highly improbable that hẹ

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supposition is in the highest degree improbable. assume the entire history of Rome at this period to be a fiction, it is impossible to bring L. Camillus into relation with the capture of the city by the Gauls, or to suppose that if the fame of any Roman reached Greece, as the saviour of his country on this occasion, it could be any other than the great Camillus.(186)

The contemporary accounts of the capture of Rome by the Gauls, confirmed by authentic traditions, place this event upon a solid historical basis; but it is difficult to judge how far the circumstantial narrative is deserving of belief. Dr. Arnold reduces the credible portion to the mere skeleton of the history. 'It is (he says) impossible to rely on any of the details of the narrative which has been handed down to us; the Romans were, no doubt, defeated at the Allia; Rome was taken and burnt, and the Capitol ransomed; but beyond this we know, properly speaking, nothing. We know that falsehood has been busy, to an almost unprecedented extent, with the common story;

or his informants should have confounded two events (compare above, vol. i. p. 60) separated by so wide an interval. Dr. Arnold, vol. ii. p. 58, who adopts the hypothesis of Niebuhr, assumes that the third Gallic expedition, in which the Romans are victorious, mentioned by Polyb. ii. 18, is identical with that in which L. Camillus is described by Livy as commanding, and remarks that Aristotle's statement [interpreted of L. Camillus] agrees completely with Polybius.' But Aristotle, as we see from the words of Plutarch, clearly understood the preservation of Rome to refer to its preservation when the city was taken, not at some subsequent period. It cannot therefore be said with truth that Aristotle and Polybius agree in representing L. Camillus as the saviour of Rome. Polybius never even mentions him. It is by no means certain, as Dr. Arnold assumes, that the third expedition described by Polybius, agrees with the battle of L. Camillus, described by Livy. See below, ch. xiii. § 13, where a different view is adopted.

(186) Greatly as the actions of Camillus have been magnified by fiction, the belief of posterity that he was the first man of his age, and one whom Rome herself saw few to equal, cannot possibly have been grounded on a delusion;' Niebuhr, Hist. vol. ii. p. 504. Camillus is re-appointed dictator in the year after the capture of the city. Placuit (says Livy) eisdem auspiciis defendi rempublicam, quibus recuperata esset, dictatoremque dici M. Furium Camillum;' vi. 2. This expression agrees closely with that of Aristotle: τὸν δὲ σώσαντα Λεύκιον εἶναι φησίν. Dr. Arnold likewise, who adopts Niebuhr's hypothesis as to the person intended by Aristotle, remarks that there is no reason to doubt that Camillus, by his genius in this memorable year, did truly save his country from destruction ;' vol. ii. p. 12. See p. 86.

exaggeration, carelessness, and honest ignorance have joined more excusably in corrupting it. The history of great events can only be preserved by cotemporary historians; and such were in this case utterly wanting.'(187) If indeed, Camillus, like Cæsar, had written memoirs of his own campaigns; or if, like Scipio Africanus the younger, he had been accompanied by a Polybius, who could have described the exploits which he witnessed, we should not have been left in this uncertainty. That the Gauls took and burnt Rome, but that the Capitol held out against them, are facts which we may consider as sure; but the share, if any, which Camillus bore in the liberation of his country, the fact next in importance to these, remains an enigma. It seems probable that while many of the great outlines of the history have been effaced by oblivion, some of the minute details such as the alarm given by the geese, the removal of the Vestal virgins in the wagon of Albinius, and the sacrifice of Fabius(188)—may have been faithfully preserved by tradition, or by the pontifical scribes.

Several sacred legends and origins are connected with this passage of history. One explanation of the Doliola referred it to this period-the temple of Aius Locutius commemorated the divine voice which gave warning of the approach of the Gauls : the altars of Jupiter Pistor and Jupiter Soter were memorials of the privations endured by the garrison on the Capitol the Busta Gallica was the burial place of the Gauls: the lituus of Romulus was found unhurt in the ashes of the Casa Romuli after the conflagration. (189) There was an annual ceremony,

(187) Hist. of Rome, vol. i. p. 531. Compare p. 548. Dr. Arnold's remark upon the absence of contemporary historians must be confined to native writers. The memory of the event, though not its history, was preserved by contemporary Greek writers.

(188) Niebuhr considers this tradition not improbable; Lect. vol. i.

p. 269.

(189) Plut. Cam. 32; Rom. 22; Dion. Hal. xiv. 5; Cic. de Div. i. 17 ; Val. Max. i. 8, § 11. Dionysius and Plutarch say that the lituus had been preserved in the καλιὰ "Αρεως, which seems to be the same as the Casa Romuli: Cicero and Valerius Maximus name the Curia Saliorum. Both these buildings were on the Palatine. See Becker, vol. i. p. 401, 418, 421. Niebuhr justly remarks: For the sake of the miracle, they

commemorating the good service of the geese, and the culpable neglect of the dogs; and the origin of the saying, 'Væ victis!' was traced to the Gaulish king, notwithstanding the manifest absurdity of supposing him to speak Latin.

With respect to the date of the burning of Rome by the Gauls, there is a tolerably close agreement between the various authorities. Polybius places it in the same year as the peace of Antalcidas, 387 B.C.(190) Dionysius declares that nearly all writers concurred in assigning it to Olymp. 98.1, the archonship of Pyrgion, which is 388 B.C., the previous year. (191) Pliny and Eutropius state that it fell in the three hundred and sixty-fourth, Livy in the three hundred and sixty-fifth year of the city, which are equivalent to 390 and 389 B.C.(192)

There was, according to Dionysius, a series of censorial records extant in his time, containing the names of the chief magistrates; from which it appeared that there was an interval of one hundred and twenty years between the expulsion of the kings and the burning of the city.(193) But the discrepancies and uncertainties in the statement of the names of the magistrates for certain years during this period forbid the supposition that a complete and authentic list had been preserved.

§ 84 Some physical occurrences are referred to this period, which require notice, because they bear an appearance of contemporary registration. The winter of the year 400 B.C. was, according to Livy, cold and snowy: so that the roads were

were ready to allow that the hut had been burnt down, though at other times that which was shown standing was maintained to be the genuine one;' Hist, vol. ii. p. 580. Julius Obsequens, c. 78 (19) states that in a conflagration of the year 148 B.C., the regia, the house of the King of the Sacrifices, was burnt-but that the chapel containing the sacred objects and one laurel, out of two, remained unhurt in the midst of the flames. The story of the olive-tree on the Acropolis of Athens is somewhat different; for it was burnt by the Persians, but shot up immediately afterwards; Herod. viii. 55; Paus, i. 27, § 2; Dion. Hal. xiv. 4. The one is a case of miraculous preservation, the other of miraculous growth. (190) Polyb. i. 6.

(191) i. 74. Niebuhr thinks that this date was taken from Timæus ; vol. ii. p. 557.

(192) Plin. H. N. xxxiii. 6; Eutrop. ii. 1; Livy, v. 54. (193) Ubi sup. Compare, ch. v. § 13..