Rome was left to the enemy, except for the small garrison in the Capitol and
for eighty of the senators, men too old to flee, who devoted themselves to the
gods to save the rest, and, arraying themselves in their robes—some as former
consuls, some as priests, some as generals—sat down with their ivory staves in
their hands, in their chairs of state in the Forum, to await the enemy.
RUINS OF THE FORUM AT ROME.
In burst the savage Gauls, roaming all over the city till they came to the
Forum, where they stood amazed and awe-struck at the sight of the eighty grand
old men motionless in their chairs. At first they looked at the strange, calm
figures as if they were the gods of the place, until one Gaul, as if desirous of
knowing whether they were flesh and blood or not, stroked the beard of the
nearest. The senator, esteeming this an insult, struck the man on the face with
his staff, and this was the sign for the slaughter of them all.
Then the Gauls began to plunder every house, dragging out and killing the few
inhabitants they found there; feasting, revelling, and piling up riches to carry
away; burning and overthrowing the houses. Day after day the little garrison in
the Capitol saw the sight, and wondered if their stock of food would hold out
till the Gauls should go away or till their friends should come to their relief.
Yet when the day came round for the sacrifice to the ancestor of one of these
beleaguered men, he boldly went forth to the altar of his own ruined house on
the Quirinal Hill, and made his offering to his forefathers, nor did one Gaul
venture to touch him, seeing that he was performing a religious rite.
The escaped Romans had rested at Ardea, where they found Camillus, and were
by him formed into an army, but he would not take the generalship without
authority from what was left of the Senate, and that was shut up in the Capitol
in the midst of the Gauls. A brave man, however, named Pontius Cominius,
declared that he could make his way through the Gauls by night, and climb up the
Capitol and down again by a precipice which they did not watch because they
thought no one could mount it, and that he would bring back the orders of the
Senate. He swam the Tiber by the help of corks, landed at night in ruined Rome
among the sleeping enemy, and climbed up the rock, bringing hope at last to the
worn-out and nearly starving garrison. Quickly they met, recalled the sentence
of banishment against Camillus, and named him Dictator. Pontius, having rested
in the meantime, slid down the rock and made his way back to Ardea safely; but
the broken twigs and torn ivy on the rock showed the Gauls that it had been
scaled, and they resolved that where man had gone man could go. So Brennus told
off the most surefooted mountaineers he could find, and at night, two and two,
they crept up the crag, so silently that no alarm was given, till just as they
came to the top, some geese that were kept as sacred to Juno, and for that
reason had been spared in spite of the scarcity, began to scream and cackle, and
thus brought to the spot a brave officer called Marcus Manlius, who found two
Gauls in the act of setting foot on the level ground on the top. With a sweep of
his sword he struck off the hand of one, and with his buckler smote the other on
the head, tumbling them both headlong down, knocking down their fellows in their
flight, and the Capitol was saved.
By way of reward every Roman soldier brought Manlius a few grains of the corn
he received from the common stock and a few drops of wine, while the tribune who
was on guard that night was thrown from the rock.
Foiled thus, and with great numbers of his men dying from the fever that
always prevailed in Rome in summer, Brennus thought of retreating, and offered
to leave Rome if the garrison in the Capitol would pay him a thousand pounds'
weight of gold. There was treasure enough in the temples to do this, and as they
could not tell what Camillus was about, nor if Pontius had reached him safely,
and they were on the point of being starved, they consented. The gold was
brought to the place appointed by the Gauls, and when the weights proved not to
be equal to the amount that the Romans had with them, Brennus resolved to have
all, put his sword into the other scale, saying, "Væ victis"—"Woe to the
conquered." But at that moment there was a noise outside—Camillus was come. The
Gauls were cut down and slain among the ruins, those who fled were killed by the
people in the country as they wandered in the fields, and not one returned to
tell the tale. So the ransom of the Capitol was rescued, and was laid up by
Camillus in the vaults as a reserve for future danger.
This was the Roman story, but their best historians say that it is made
better for Rome than is quite the truth, for that the Capitol was really
conquered, and the Gauls helped themselves to whatever they chose and went off
with it, though sickness and weariness made them afterwards disperse, so that
they were mostly cut off by the country people.
Every old record had been lost and destroyed, so that, before this, Roman
history can only be hearsay, derived from what the survivors recollected; and
the whole of the buildings, temples, senate-house, and dwellings lay in ruins.
Some of the citizens wished to change the site of the city to Veii; but
Camillus, who was Dictator, was resolved to hold fast by the hearths of their
fathers, and while the debate was going on in the ruins of the senate-house a
troop of soldiers were marching in, and the centurion was heard calling out,
"Plant your ensign here; this is a good place to stay in." "A happy omen," cried
one of the senators; "I adore the gods who gave it." So it was settled to
rebuild the city, and in digging among the ruins there were found the golden rod
of Romulus, the brazen tables on which the Laws of the Twelve Tables were
engraved, and other brasses with records of treaties with other nations. Fabius
was accused of having done all the harm by having broken the law of nations, but
he was spared at the entreaty of his friends. Manlius was surnamed Capitolinus,
and had a house granted him on the Capitol; and Camillus when he laid down his
dictatorship, was saluted as like Romulus—another founder of Rome.
The new buildings were larger and more ornamented than the old ones; but the
lines of the old underground drains, built in the mighty Etruscan fashion by the
elder Tarquin as it was said, were not followed, and this tended to render Rome
more unhealthy, so that few of her richer citizens lived there in summer or
autumn, but went out to country houses on the hills.
ENTRY OF THE FORUM ROMANUM BY THE VIA SACRA
|
