A fearful din arose: yells of triumph, shrieks of terror, wailing of women, and the pitiful crying of children; in an instant of time the defenders were flung from the walls and the town gates opened; Roman troops came pouring through, or climbed over the defenceless walls; everything was overrun, in every street the battle raged. After a terrible slaughter, resistance began to slacken.2
Rome’s aggression against Veii was not unusual. In this era Mediterranean city states routinely fought wars with their neighbours. Yet in their war with Veii the Romans exhibited a noticeable thoroughness. When other Mediterranean cities suffered defeat they usually continued to exist, but after Veii fell to Rome it all but vanished from history. According to Livy, the very next morning after the city was captured, the Roman commander sold all its surviving inhabitants into slavery. It was the first instance of mass enslavement in Roman history.
III
The Veiians, unlike most of Rome’s later enemies, were at least able to enjoy a little Schadenfreude. Just nine years after their city fell, the Gauls crushed the Roman army at the battle by the Allia and advanced on their city. Livy describes how the Romans watched as they approached. ‘All too soon cries like the howling of wolves and barbaric songs could be heard, as the Gallic squadrons rode hither and thither close outside the walls. All the time between then and the following dawn was filled with unbearable suspense. When would the assault come?’3
Livy claims that the Gauls caught the city so much by surprise that they found the gates open, but the truth is probably simpler. There were no gates. At this time Rome seems to have had little in the way of walls. Its weak points were defended by ditches and earth ramparts, and though its citadel, the Capitoline Hill, may have had some walling, other hills probably relied on their steepness. Rome was virtually an open city.
So we come to Livy’s famous stories of Roman heroism, many of which are still familiar today. One tells of a plebeian, Lucius Albinius, who was fleeing the city in a cart with his family when he saw the Vestal Virgins walking beside the road carrying the sacred objects of their temple. Albinius did not hesitate. Knowing his duty, he ejected his family from the cart and carried the Vestals to the safety of Rome’s chief ally of the time, the Etruscan city of Caere.
There is the story of the venerable senators. As the Gauls approached the city the Romans retreated to their citadel on the Capitoline but realized their supplies would soon be exhausted if everyone took refuge there. The city’s elders who had served Rome all their lives volunteered to remain below, even though they knew this meant certain death. They dressed in all the finery of their rank and then waited in the courtyards of their great houses. When the Gauls found them and saw their ‘grave, calm eyes, like the majesty of gods’, they became entranced. Finally, a Gaul tugged the beard of one of the senators, who struck him on the head with his ivory staff. The Gaul, ‘flamed into anger and killed him, and the others were butchered where they sat’.4
There is the tale of Gaius Fabius Dorsuo, whose family had a solemn religious obligation to make a sacrifice on the Quirinal Hill on a fixed day each year. The Quirinal was now held by the Gauls, yet when the day came Dorsuo did not hesitate. He carefully dressed himself for the ritual and then strode towards the Gauls, who were so amazed at his audacity that they let him pass.
The story that is best known today, of course, is that of the geese. After a frontal attack on the Capitoline was foiled by the bravery of the Romans, the Gauls resorted to stealth. In the dead of night they climbed the steep cliff of the hill, so quietly that not even the Romans’ dogs raised the alarm. But the sacred geese of Juno’s temple heard: ‘The cackling of the birds and the clapping of their wings awoke Marcus Manlius – a distinguished officer who had been consul three years before – and he, seizing his sword and giving the alarm, hurried, without waiting for the support of his bewildered comrades, straight to the point of danger.’5 One Gaul was already clambering on to the hilltop but Manlius hurled him back with a blow from his shield and he fell, dislodging those who were climbing up behind him.
Finally, Livy tells the story of how the Romans, at the very last moment, managed to save their city’s honour. Besieged on the Capitoline they learned that a rescuer was on his way. Camillus, their heroic commander at Veii, who had been driven into exile by false accusations of corruption, was raising an army. Yet time was running out. After their night attack failed, the Gauls determined to starve the Romans into surrender. When the Romans became so weakened that they could hardly hold their weapons they knew they had no choice but to sue for peace. Their leader, Quintus Sulpicius, negotiated with the Gallic leader Brennus, who agreed to end the siege in exchange for a payment of 1,000 pounds of gold. The Gauls then added insult to injury by using over-heavy weights: ‘… and when the Roman commander objected the insolent barbarian flung his sword onto the scale, saying, “Woe to the vanquished!” – words intolerable to Roman ears.’6
Yet help was at hand. At that very moment Camillus appeared with his army and the Gauls were forced to fight a second battle. This time their barbarian impetuosity let them down: ‘… they attacked, but with more fire than judgement. Luck hard turned at last; human skill, aided by the powers of heaven, was fighting on the side of Rome, and the invaders were scattered at the first encounter with as little effort as had gone into their victory on the Allia.’7
If these stories seem like patriotic propaganda, that is exactly what they were. The question is, can any truth be found in them? Other accounts, fragments and archaeological discoveries all offer fascinating clues. Especially useful are later references to the temple to Juno Moneta where the geese were kept. Though nothing of the building survives today we know that it was dedicated by the Roman military hero Camillus, and that inscriptions on its walls listed a couple of names that will now be familiar. One of these was Manlius Capitolinus who, in the temple inscription, was described as Camillus’ cavalry commander. Also mentioned was Fabius Dorsuo, who is named as one of the city’s two consuls: republican Rome’s power-sharing rulers.
Brennus puts his sword to the weighing pan in this nineteenth-century illustration.
Something strange seems to be going on. The last two names are both heroes in Livy’s stories but the details are all wrong. Livy’s Manlius Capitolinus – the officer who drove back the Gauls’ night attack single-handed – was not a cavalry commander. Likewise Livy’s Fabius Dorsuo – who braved the Gallic lines to perform his family’s religious duties – was not mentioned as being consul. This was an impossible omission, the equivalent of failing to mention that a man named Barack Obama was president of the United States.
Yet there is an altogether greater problem. It is known that the temple of Juno Moneta was first dedicated in 345 BC. In other words, it did not exist until forty years after Rome’s struggle with the Gauls. According to Livy, Camillus, to whom the temple was dedicated, commanded the Roman army at Veii, nine years before the Gallic attack. If he had been thirty at this time – young for a Roman commander – he would have been over eighty when the temple of Juno Moneta showed he was still commanding Rome’s forces.
Camillus is real enough. Early records confirm that he led Rome’s military with great success in the era after the Gallic attack. But there is nothing to show he did so at the time of the disaster, let alone during the war with Veii. Livy evidently pushed his career further back into the past. It is easy enough to imagine why: he gave Rome an excuse for her defeat. By making Camillus the hero of Veii and then having him unfairly forced into exile, he presented him as blameless for the Allia disaster. He suggests that the Romans would have won had their hero commander not been absent.
In fairness, Livy simply embroidered stories that would already have existed long before his time. An intriguing explanation has been proposed as to how these first came to life. Romans strolled up to the temple of Juno Moneta and began wondering at its name and at the inscriptions on its walls. They looked at writings they no longer understood and made up st
ories. The temple’s name, Moneta, had two meanings. It meant advisor, which was probably the relevant meaning, and would have referred to temple priests looking for signs in the skies. But it also meant warner. Romans assumed, wrongly, that it been built as thank-offering for the saving (warning) of the Capitoline citadel. This error led them to believe the temple was forty years older than it actually was, and that the people whose names were inscribed on its walls had been living at the time of the Gallic sack. The story of the geese that quacked and the dogs that failed to bark would also have come into existence thanks to poorly understood antiquities. One of Rome’s earliest public contracts was for the feeding of Juno’s sacred geese, while there was a tradition – probably far more ancient than Rome’s struggle with the Gauls – that a dog be sacrificed on the Capitoline.
As Rome’s early history was not written down until two centuries after 387 BC there was ample room for patriotic misconceptions. These probably crystallized in the late third century – 180 years after the actual events – by which time the Romans had defeated numerous enemies, from Pyrrhus’ Greeks to Hannibal’s Carthaginians, leading them to view themselves as a super-nation, divinely destined to rule the world. By then the Capitoline Hill had acquired a special religious significance in their eyes and so would have been a natural focus of heroic invention.
Yet not all of Livy’s account seems to have been fiction. A couple of elements held some truth. One was the gold. Chance mentions in a couple of other sources are revealing. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, who wrote at the same time as Livy, recounts how, after their attack on Rome, the Gauls returned from the south and were attacked by forces of Rome’s ally, Caere, which retrieved gold that Romans had given as ransom. A second story comes from five centuries after the battle on the Allia, in the writer Suetonius’ life of the emperor Tiberius. Suetonius mentions that Tiberius’ family, the Drusii, had an old traditional explanation as to how they got their name. During Rome’s wars with the Gauls in northern Italy – centuries before Suetonius’ time, and centuries after the sack of Rome – one of their ancestors fought and killed a Gallic chief named Drausus in single combat. Afterwards the ancestor was said to have recovered the gold that Rome had paid Brennus.
The meaning of the two stories is clear. The Romans paid up. What’s more, they may have done so without ever defending the Capitoline Hill. A series of references have been found which indicate that the Gauls captured all of Rome. As the city’s defences were negligible it would not be surprising. This version of events also fits with archaeological discoveries. Excavations in the Forum in the later nineteenth century uncovered an extensive burned layer and at first it was assumed that this dated from the Gallic sack. Later, though, when dating methods improved, the layer was found to be much older, dating from the unstable times of the late sixth century, when Romans threw out their last king and formed a republic. No burned layer has been found anywhere from the 380s BC. It seems the city was hardly damaged. So a new narrative offers itself that is altogether less romantic than Livy’s. The Gauls crushed the Romans at the Allia, swept into the city and were paid to go away. Paid promptly, too, judging by the lack of damage.
Even then, it must have been a brutal moment. Though no details have been preserved one could expect nothing else when a large, well-armed horde of young, poorly disciplined males found themselves in a position of unrestrained power. The Gauls would have raided farms around the city to feed themselves. Unless the Romans paid up very promptly indeed, there would have been outrages in the city, too: robbery, violence and sexual attacks.
Another story of Livy’s also seems to hold some truth, though the evidence for this comes by a most convoluted route. The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, who was born shortly after the Gauls’ attack on Rome, mentioned the sacking in one of his writings. Unfortunately, the writing is lost, but it was briefly referred to by the later Greek historian, Plutarch. According to Plutarch, Aristotle wrote that Rome was saved by a certain Lucius. This is almost certainly the Lucius Albinius who chucked his own family from his cart to give a lift to the Vestal Virgins.
Albinius, it seems, was the true of hero of the hour. Before the myths of heroic Capitoline holdouts emerged, Albinius’ story was probably the one that Romans told to one another to put their humiliating defeat in a better light, much as the British did after their catastrophe in France in 1940 with the story of their valiant escape at Dunkirk. If Rome had been lost, at least her religious treasures were saved. The city’s spirit and the favour of her gods had been preserved. Albinius may have done a great deal more for his city that has been forgotten. There are clues as to why his role became diminished with time. Livy mentions that he was of humble, plebeian origins, a detail that would have reduced his appeal to later history commentators who preferred to ascribe heroism – fake heroism, as it turns out – to members of their own aristocratic class. Another likely victim of downgrading was Rome’s Etruscan ally, the city of Caere, where the Vestals and their treasure were taken. Caere, too, probably had a greater role than is remembered, but it ceased to interest Romans after Caere city turned from ally to enemy, and then to a conquered enemy.
Yet, however much the Romans prettified and fictionalized the events of 387 BC they did not forget what had happened. The Gauls left a permanent mark on the Romans’ worldview, giving them a new sense of fear. Romans had an enduring and increasingly irrational conviction that the Gauls would return one day and finish the job by destroying their city. When Gallic raiders returned to Latium – which they did at least twice – the Romans responded by declaring a state of emergency, a ‘tumultus Gallicus’, under which all exemptions from military service were suspended and officials could recruit soldiers without restraint.
Roman fears also drove them to something decidedly un-Roman: human sacrifice. In later times when Rome suffered alarming defeats involving Gauls, the Romans took two Greeks and two Gauls – one male and one female of each – and buried them alive in the Forum Boarium animal market. This grisly ritual took place on at least three occasions: during wars with the Gauls in 228 BC, in 216 BC after the Romans’ defeat at Cannae by Hannibal – half of whose army were Gauls – and again in 114 BC, when Gallic forces defeated the Romans in Macedonia. As late as AD 21, by which time Rome ruled the Mediterranean and had conquered all of Europe’s Celts except in Britain and Ireland, a minor revolt by two Gallic tribes in France caused panic in Rome.
Yet Rome’s fears also led her citizens to more rational responses, which played a key role in their city’s remarkable rise. After the Gallic attack of 387 BC the Romans belatedly gave their city some proper defences. In a huge undertaking that may have taken as long as twenty-five years to complete, they built a city wall 11 kilometres long, stretches of which can still be seen today. The new wall, now known as the Servian Wall, proved invaluable on several occasions during Rome’s numerous later wars. The Romans also reorganized their army to make it less vulnerable against a mobile, fast-moving enemy like that of Brennus. Infantry were protected by javelin throwers and stone slingers and troops were divided into independent units, so if one part of the line collapsed other sections might hold and rally. With these changes the Roman army became a formidable fighting machine.
So Rome’s shock drubbing by the Gauls made her stronger, as she rose, phoenix-like, from disaster. Bribing barbarians to go away may have seemed shameful to later Romans, and an episode that was best rewritten, but it had been the right decision. The Romans and their state survived. As we have seen, the city’s main monuments, such as the vast temple to Jupiter Best and Greatest, were preserved. Not for the last time, Rome escaped lightly from catastrophe.
The city was soon back on her expansionist path. Though the Latin cities that Rome had dominated rebelled, Rome quickly reasserted control and within a few decades of the Allia defeat Roman armies were campaigning further afield than ever before. In long, gruelling wars against the Samnites of southern Italy, the Etruscans, King Pyrrhus’ Greeks and
Hannibal’s Carthaginians, the Romans repeatedly shrugged off disastrous setbacks – and they had quite a few – to rally and fight again. In doing so they acquired the very qualities of courage and no-nonsense gritty determination that Livy prematurely ascribed to them during the Gallic attack. King Pyrrhus spoke for many of Rome’s enemies when he observed that if he won one more victory over the Romans he would be utterly lost.
The Romans’ victories allowed them to enjoy some revenge. The Gauls seem to have seen what was coming and in every one of Rome’s early wars they took the side of Rome’s enemies, yet it did them no good. In 232 BC the Roman commander P. Nasica led his forces into the lands of the people who had sacked their city a century and a half earlier, the Senones, and by the end of his campaign Nasica boasted that he had left only boys and old men alive. The Romans took care to ensure their victory was permanent. The area’s best farming land was seized and given to Roman citizens and their Latin allies. Senone territory was crossed by Roman roads and a military city, Sena Gallica, was built on the coast, dominating the region.
By the early second century BC all of Gallic northern Italy was subdued, and subdued with a thoroughness that was unusual even for the Romans. Large parts of the population were killed, dispersed or enslaved. Afterwards Italy’s Gauls continued to be treated with distrust and they were the very last people in Italy to be granted Roman citizenship.
Eventually, though, the Gauls and the Romans came to terms with one another. The Romans accepted Gauls as participants in their imperial project and, once accepted, the Gauls began to take up the ways of their conquerors. They studied Latin, which, as it was closely related to their own language, they found pleasingly easy to learn. They watched Roman entertainments, gave their children a Roman education, worshipped Roman gods and lived in cities whose temples and amphitheatres were modelled on those of Rome. They were even stirred by Livy’s stories of Rome’s gritty early heroes. Until, eventually, they came to think of themselves as Romans. Rome’s victory could hardly have been more complete.
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