The wars with the Etruscans went on, and chiefly with the city of Veii, which
stood on a hill twelve miles from Rome, and was altogether thirty years at war
with it. At last the Romans made up their minds that, instead of going home
every harvest-time to gather in their crops, they must watch the city constantly
till they could take it, and thus, as the besiegers were unable to do their own
work, pay was raised for them to enable them to get it done, and this was the
beginning of paying armies.
ARROW MACHINE.
The siege of Veii lasted ten years, and during the last the Alban lake filled
to an unusual height, although the summer was very dry. One of the Veian
soldiers cried out to the Romans half in jest, "You will never take Veii till
the Alban lake is dry." It turned out that there was an old tradition that Veii
should fall when the lake was drained. On this the senate sent orders to have
canals dug to carry the waters to the sea, and these still remain. Still Veii
held out, and to finish the war a dictator was appointed, Marcus Furius
Camillus, who chose for his second in command a man of one of the most virtuous
families in Rome, as their surname testified, Publius Cornelius, called Scipio,
or the Staff, because either he or one of his forefathers had been the staff of
his father's old age. Camillus took the city by assault, with an immense
quantity of spoil, which was divided among the soldiers.
Camillus in his pride took to himself at his triumph honors that had hitherto
only been paid to the gods. He had his face painted with vermilion and his car
drawn by milk-white horses. This shocked the people, and he gave greater offence
by declaring that he had vowed a tenth part of the spoil to Apollo, but had
forgotten it in the division of the plunder, and now must take it again. The
soldiers would not consent, but lest the god should be angry with them, it was
resolved to send a gold vase to his oracle at Delphi. All the women of Rome
brought their jewels, and the senate rewarded them by a decree that funeral
speeches might be made over their graves as over those of men, and likewise that
they might be driven in chariots to the public games.
Camillus commanded in another war with the Falisci, also an Etruscan race,
and laid siege to their city. The sons of almost all the chief families were in
charge of a sort of schoolmaster, who taught them both reading and all kinds of
exercises. One day this man, pretending to take the boys out walking, led them
all into the enemy's camp, to the tent of Camillus, where he told that he
brought them all, and with them the place, since the Romans had only to threaten
their lives to make their fathers deliver up the city. Camillus, however, was so
shocked at such perfidy, that he immediately bade the lictors strip the fellow
instantly, and give the boys rods with which to scourge him back into the town.
Their fathers were so grateful that they made peace at once, and about the same
time the Æqui were also conquered; and the commons and open lands belonging to
Veii being divided, so that each Roman freeman had six acres, the plebeians were
contented for the time.
SIEGE MACHINE
The truth seems to have been that these Etruscan nations were weakened by a
great new nation coming on them from the North. They were what the Romans called
Galli or Gauls, one of the great races of the old stock which has always been
finding its way westward into Europe, and they had their home north of the Alps,
but they were always pressing on and on, and had long since made settlements in
northern Italy. They were in clans, each obedient to one chief as a father, and
joining together in one brotherhood. They had lands to which whole families had
a common right, and when their numbers outgrew what the land could maintain, the
bolder ones would set off with their wives, children, and cattle to find new
homes. The Greeks and Romans themselves had begun first in the same way, and
their tribes, and the claims of all to the common land, were the remains of the
old way; but they had been settled in cities so long that this had been
forgotten, and they were very different people from the wild men who spoke what
we call Welsh, and wore checked tartan trews and plaids, with gold collars round
their necks, round shields, huge broadswords, and their red or black hair long
and shaggy. The Romans knew little or nothing about what passed beyond their own
Apennines, and went on with their own quarrels. Camillus was accused of having
taken more than his proper share of the spoil of Veii, in especial a brass door
from a temple. His friends offered to pay any fine that might be laid on him,
but he was too proud to stand his trial, and chose rather to leave Rome. As he
passed the gates, he turned round and called upon the gods to bring Rome to
speedy repentance for having driven him away.
Even then the Gauls were in the midst of a war with Clusium, the city of
Porsena, and the inhabitants sent to beg the help of the Romans, and the senate
sent three young brothers of the Fabian family to try to arrange matters. They
met the Gaulish Bran or chief, whom Latin authors call Brennus, and asked him
what was his quarrel with Clusium or his right to any part of Etruria. Brennus
answered that his right was his sword, and that all things belonged to the
brave, and that his quarrel with the men of Clusium was, that though they had
more land than they could till, they would not yield him any. As to the Romans,
they had robbed their neighbors already, and had no right to find fault.
This put the Fabian brothers in a rage, and they forgot the caution of their
family, as well as those rules of all nations which forbid an ambassador to
fight, and also forbid his person to be touched by the enemy; and when the men
of Clusium made an attack on the Gauls they joined in the attack, and Quintus,
the eldest brother, slew one of the chiefs. Brennus, wild as he was, knew these
laws of nations, and in great anger broke up his siege of Clusium, and, marching
towards Rome, demanded that the Fabii should be given up to him. Instead of
this, the Romans made them all three military tribunes, and as the Gauls came
nearer the whole army marched out to meet them in such haste that they did not
wait to sacrifice to the gods nor consult the omens. The tribunes were all young
and hot-headed, and they despised the Gauls; so out they went to attack them on
the banks of the Allia, only seven and a-half miles from Rome. A most terrible
defeat they had; many fell in the field, many were killed in the flight, others
were drowned in trying to swim the Tiber, others scattered to Veii and the other
cities, and a few, horror-stricken and wet through, rushed into Rome with the
sad tidings. There were not men enough left to defend the walls! The enemy would
instantly be upon them! The only place strong enough to keep them out was the
Capitol, and that would only hold a few people within it! So there was nothing
for it but flight. The braver, stronger men shut themselves up in the Capitol;
all the rest, with the women and children, put their most precious goods into
carts and left the city. The Vestal Virgins carried the sacred fire, and were
plodding along in the heat, when a plebeian named Albinus saw their state,
helped them into his cart, and took them to the city of Cumæ, where they found
shelter in a temple. And so Rome was left to the enemy.
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