Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
were so incensed that they were for taking their gold back again, and
returning to endure the siege. Others were for passing by and
dissembling a petty injury, and not to account that the indignity of the
thing lay in paying more than was due, since the paying anything at all
was itself a dishonor only submitted to as a necessity of the times.
Whilst this difference remained still unsettled, both amongst themselves
and with the Gauls, Camillus was at the gates with his army; and, having
learned what was going on, commanded the main body of his forces to
follow slowly after him in good order, and himself with the choicest of
his men hastening on, went at once to the Romans; where all giving way
to him, and receiving him as their sole magistrate, with profound
silence and order, he took the gold out of the scales, and delivered it
to his officers, and commanded the Gauls to take their weights and
scales and depart; saying that it was customary with the Romans to
deliver their country with iron, not with gold. And when Brennus began to
rage, and say that he was unjustly dealt with in such a breach of
contract, Camillus answered that it was never legally made, and the
agreement of no force or obligation; for that himself being declared
dictator, and there being no other magistrate by law, the engagement had
been made with men who had no power to enter into it; but now they might
say anything they had to urge, for he was come with full power by law
to grant pardon to such as should ask it, or inflict punishment on the
guilty, if they did not repent. At this, Brennus broke into violent
anger, and an immediate quarrel ensued; both sides drew their swords and
attacked, but in confusion, as could not otherwise be amongst houses,
and ill narrow lanes and places where it was impossible to form in any
order. But Brennus, presently recollecting himself, called off his men,
and, with the loss of a few only, brought them to their camp; and,
rising in the night with all his forces, left the city, and, advancing
about eight miles, encamped upon the way to Gabii. As soon as day
appeared, Camillus came up with him, splendidly armed himself, and his
soldiers full of courage and confidence; and there engaging with him in
a sharp conflict, which lasted a long while, overthrew his army with
great slaughter, and took their camp. Of those that fled, some were
presently cut off by the pursuers; others, and these were the greatest
number, dispersed hither and thither, and were dispatched by the people
that came sallying out from the neighboring towns and villages.
Thus Rome was strangely taken, and more strangely recovered, having been
seven whole months in the possession of the barbarians who entered her a
little after the Ides of July, and were driven out about the Ides of
February following. Camillus triumphed, as he deserved, having saved
his country that was lost, and brought the city, so to say, back again
to itself. For those that had fled abroad, together with their wives
and children, accompanied him as he rode in; and those who had been shut
up in the Capitol, and were reduced almost to the point of perishing
with hunger, went out to meet him, embracing each other as they met, and
weeping for joy and, through the excess of the present pleasure, scarce
believing in its truth. And when the priests and ministers of the gods
appeared, bearing the sacred things, which in their flight they had
either hid on the spot, or conveyed away with them, and now openly
showed in safety, the citizens who saw the blessed sight felt as if with
these the gods themselves were again returned unto Rome. After Camillus
had sacrificed to the gods, and purified the city according to the
direction of those properly instructed, he restored the existing
temples, and erected a new one to Rumour, or Voice, informing himself
of the spot in which that voice from heaven came by night to Marcus
Caedicius, foretelling the coming of the barbarian army.
It was a matter of difficulty, and a hard task, amidst so much rubbish,
to discover and redetermine the consecrated places; but by the zeal of
Camillus, and the incessant labor of the priests, it was at last
accomplished. But when it came also to rebuilding the city, which was
wholly demolished, despondency seized the multitude, and a backwardness
to engage in a work for which they had no materials; at a time, too,
when they rather needed relief and repose from their past labors, than
any new demands upon their exhausted strength and impaired fortunes.
Thus insensibly they turned their thoughts again towards Veii, a city
ready-built and well-provided, and gave an opening to the arts of
flatterers eager to gratify their desires, and lent their ears to
seditious language flung out against Camillus; as that, out of ambition
and self-glory, he withheld them from a city fit to receive them,
forcing them to live in the midst of ruins, and to re-erect a pile of
burnt rubbish, that he might be esteemed not the chief magistrate only
and general of Rome, but, to the exclusion of Romulus, its founder,
also. The senate, therefore, fearing a sedition, would not suffer
Camillus, though desirous, to lay down his authority within the year,
though no other dictator had ever held it above six months.
They themselves, meantime, used their best endeavors, by kind
persuasions and familiar addresses, to encourage and to appease the
people, showing them the shrines and tombs of their ancestors, calling
to their remembrance the sacred spots and holy places which Romulus and
Numa or any other of their kings had consecrated and left to their
keeping; and among the strongest religious arguments, urged the head,
newly separated from the body, which was found in laying the foundation
of the Capitol, marking it as a place destined by fate to be the head of
all Italy; and the holy fire which had just been rekindled again, since
the end of the war, by the vestal virgins; "What a disgrace would it be
to them to lose and extinguish this, leaving the city it belonged to, to
be either inhabited by strangers and new-comers, or left a wild pasture
for cattle to graze on?" Such reasons as these, urged with complaint
and expostulation, sometimes in private upon individuals, and sometimes
in their public assemblies, were met, on the other hand, by laments and
protestations of distress and helplessness; entreaties, that, reunited
as they just were, after a sort of shipwreck, naked and destitute, they
would not constrain them to patch up the pieces of a ruined and
shattered city, when they had another at hand ready-built and prepared.
Camillus thought good to refer it to general deliberation, and himself
spoke largely and earnestly in behalf of his country, as also many
others. At last, calling to Lucius Lucretius, whose place it was to
speak first, he commanded him to give his sentence, and the rest as they
followed, in order. Silence being made, and Lucretius just about to
begin, by chance a centurion, passing by outside with his company of the
day-guard, called out with a loud voice to the ensign-bearer to halt and
fix his standard, for this was the best place to stay in. This voice,
coming in that moment of time, and at that crisis of uncertainty and
anxiety for the future, was taken as a direction what was to be done;
so that Lucretius, assuming an attitude of devotion, gave sentence in
concurrence with the gods, as he said, as likewise did all that
followed. Even among the common people it created a wonderful change of
feeling; every one now cheered and encouraged his neighbor, and set
himself to the work, proceeding in it, however, not by any regular lines
or divisions, but every one pitching upon that plot of ground which came
next to hand, or best pleased his fancy; by which haste and hurry in
building, they constructed their city in narrow and ill-designed lanes,
and with houses huddled together one upon another; for it is said that
within the compass of the year the whole city was raised up anew, both
in its public walls and private buildings. The persons, however,
appointed by Camillus to resume and mark out, in this general confusion,
all consecrated places, coming, in their way round the Palatium, to the
chapel of Mars, found the chapel itself indeed destroyed and burnt to
the ground, like everything else, by the barbarians; but whilst they
were clearing the place, and carrying away the rubbish, lit upon
Romulus's augural staff, buried under a great heap of ashes. This sort
of staff is crooked at one end, and is called lituus; they make use of
it in quartering out the regions of the heavens when engaged in
divination from the flight of birds; Romulus, who was himself a great
diviner, made use of it. But when he disappeared from the earth, the
priests took his staff and kept it, as other holy things, from the touch
of man; and when they now found that, whereas all other things were
consumed, this staff had altogether escaped the flames, they began to
conceive happier hopes of Rome, and to augur from this token its future
everlasting safety.
And now they had scarcely got a breathing time from their trouble, when
a new war came upon them; and the Aequians, Volscians, and Latins all at
once invaded their territories, and the Tuscans besieged Sutrium, their
confederate city. The military tribunes who commanded the army, and
were encamped about the hill Maecius, being closely besieged by the
Latins, and the camp in danger to be lost, sent to Rome, where Camillus
was a third time chosen dictator. Of this war two different accounts
are given; I shall begin with the more fabulous. They say that the
Latins (whether out of pretense, or a real design to revive the ancient
relationship of the two nations) sent to desire of the Romans some free-
born maidens in marriage; that when the Romans were at a loss how to
determine (for on one hand they dreaded a war, having scarcely yet
settled and recovered themselves, and on the other side suspected that
this asking of wives was, in plain terms, nothing else but a demand for
hostages, though covered over with the specious name of intermarriage
and alliance), a certain handmaid, by name Tutula, or, as some call her,
Philotis, persuaded the magistrates to send with her some of the most
youthful and best looking maid-servants, in the bridal dress of noble
virgins, and leave the rest to her care and management; that the
magistrates consenting, chose out as many as she thought necessary for
her purpose, and, adorning them with gold and rich clothes, delivered
them to the Latins, who were encamped not far from the city; that at
night the rest stole away the enemy's swords, but Tutula or Philotis,
getting to the top of a wild fig-tree, and spreading out a thick woolen
cloth behind her, held out a torch towards Rome, which was the signal
concerted between her and the commanders, without the knowledge,
however, of any other of the citizens, which was the reason that their
issuing out from the city was tumultuous, the officers pushing their men
on, and they calling upon one another's names, and scarce able to bring
themselves into order; that setting upon the enemy's works, who either
were asleep or expected no such matter, they took the camp, and
destroyed most of them; and that this was done on the nones of July,
which was then called Quintilis, and that the feast that is observed on
that day is a commemoration of what was then done. For in it, first,
they run out of the city in great crowds, and call out aloud several
familiar and common names, Caius, Marcus, Lucius, and the like, in
representation of the way in which they called to one another when they
went out in such haste. In the next place, the maid-servants, gaily