Part 15

Manlius was rewarded, says the story, by each man giving him from his scanty store a day's allowance of food,--namely, half a pound of corn and five ounces in weight of wine. As for the real defenders of Rome, the geese of the Capitol, they were ever after held in the highest honor and veneration.

As the Capitol could not be taken by assault or surprise, there remained only the slow process of siege. For six or eight months the Gauls blockaded the hill. So says the story, but it was probably not so long. However, in the end the Romans were brought to the point of famine, and offered to ransom their city by paying a large sum of gold. Brennus, the Gaulish king, was ready to accept the offer. His men were suffering from the Roman fever; food had grown scarce; he agreed, if paid a thousand pounds' weight of gold, to withdraw his army from Rome.

Much gold had been brought by the fugitive patricians into the Capitol. From this the delegates brought down and placed in the scales a sufficient quantity. But while they found the gold, the Gauls found the weights, and it was soon discovered that the wily barbarians were cheating. Their weights were too heavy. Complaint of this fraud was made by the Roman tribune of the soldiers. In reply Brennus drew his heavy broadsword and threw it into the scale with the weights.

"What does this mean?" asked the tribune.

"It means," answered the barbarian, haughtily, "woe to the vanquished!" "Væ victis esse!"

While this was going on, says the legend, Camillus, the dictator, was marching to Rome with the legions he had organized at Veii. He appeared at the right minute for the dramatic interest of the story, entered the Forum while the gold was being weighed, bade the Romans take back their gold, threw the weights to the Gauls, and told Brennus proudly that it was the Roman custom to pay their debts in iron, not in gold.

A fight ensued, as might be expected. The Gauls were driven from the city. The next day Camillus attacked them in their camp, eight miles from Rome, and defeated them so utterly that not a man was left alive to carry home the tale of the slaughter.

This story of the coming of Camillus is too much like the last act of a stage-play, or the dénouement of a novel, to be true. Most likely the Gauls marched off with their gold, though they may have been attacked on their retreat, and most or all of the gold regained.

Camillus, however, is said to have saved Rome in still another way. The old city was in ashes. Most of the citizens were at Veii, where they had found or built new homes. They were loath to come back to rebuild a ruined city. This Camillus induced them to do. Every appeal was made to the local pride and the religious sentiments of the people. A centurion, marching with his company, and being obliged to halt in front of the senate-house, called to the standard-bearer, "Pitch your standard here, for this is the best place to stop at." This casual remark was looked upon as an omen from heaven, and by this and the like means the people were induced to return.

Then the rebuilding of Rome began. The sites of the temples were retraced as far as could be done in the ruins. The laws of the twelve tables and some other records were recovered, but the mass of the historical annals of Rome had been destroyed. Some relics were said to have been miraculously preserved, among them the shepherd's crook of Romulus.

But the bulk of the possessions of the Romans had vanished in the flames; the streets were mere heaps of ashes; the very walls had been in part pulled down; rubbish and ruin lay everywhere. Rome, like the phoenix, had to be born again from its ashes. Men built wherever they could find a clear spot. Stones and roofing-material were brought from Veii, and one city was dismantled that another might be restored. Stones and timber were supplied to any man from the public lands. The city rapidly rose again. But it was an irregular city; the streets ran anywhere; no effort was made at rule or system in the making of the new Rome.

As for Camillus, he came to be honored as the second founder of Rome. While the Romans were at work on their new homes they were harassed by their foes, and he was kept busy with the army in the field. He lived for twenty-five years longer, and in the year 367 B.C., when some eighty years of age, he marched again to meet the Gauls in a new assault upon Rome, and defeated them with such slaughter that they left Rome alone for many years afterwards.

Marcus Manlius, the preserver of the Capitol, was not so fortunate. He came forward as the patron of the poor, who began to suffer again from the severe laws against debtors. Finally he began to use his large fortune to relieve suffering debtors, and is said to have paid the debts of four hundred debtors, thus saving them from bondage. This generosity won him the unbounded affection of the people, who called him the "Father of the Commons." But it aroused the suspicion of the patricians, and some of these, against whom he had used violent language, had him arrested on a charge of treason, perhaps with good reason. Though he showed the many honors he had received for services to his country, he was condemned to death and his house razed to the ground. Thus the patricians dealt with the benefactors of the poor.

THE CURTIAN GULF.

During three years--363 to 361 B.C.--Rome was ravaged by the plague, which was so violent and fatal as to carry off the citizens by hundreds. In its first year it found a noble victim in Camillus, the conqueror of Veii and the second founder of Rome, who four years before had a second time defeated the Gauls. He was the last of the old heroes of Rome, those whose glory belongs to romance rather than history. The Gauls had destroyed the records of old Rome, and left only legend and romance. With the new Rome history fairly began.

But we have another romantic tale to tell before we bid adieu to the story of early Rome. In the second year of the pestilence a strange and portentous event occurred. The Tiber rose to an unusual height, overflowed with its waters the great circus (Circus Maximus), and put a stop to the games then going on, which were intended to propitiate the wrath of heaven, and induce the gods to relieve man from the evil of the plague.

And now, in the midst of the Forum, there yawned open a fearful gulf, so wide and deep that the superstitious Romans viewed it with awe and affright. Whether it was due to an earthquake or the wrath of the gods is not for us to say. The Romans believed the latter; those who prefer may believe the former. But, so we are told, it seemed bottomless. Throw what they would in it, it stood unfilled, and the feeling grew that no power of man could ever fill its yawning depths.

Man being powerless, the oracles of the gods were consulted. Must this gaping wound always stand open in the soil of Rome? or could it in any way be filled and the offended deities who had caused it be propitiated? From the oracle came the reply that it must stand open till that which constituted the best and true strength of the Roman commonwealth was cast as an offering into the gulf. Then only would it close, and thereafter forever would the state live and flourish.

The true strength of Rome! In what did this consist? This question men asked each other anxiously and none seemed able to answer. But there was one man in Rome who interpreted rightly the meaning of the oracle. This was a noble youth, M. Curtius by name, who had played his part valiantly in war, and gained great fame by brave and manly deeds. The true strength of Rome? he said to the people. In what else could it lie but in the arms and valor of her children? This was the sacrifice the gods demanded.

Going home, he put on his armor and mounted his horse. Riding to the brink of the gulf, he, before the eyes of the trembling and awe-struck multitude, devoted himself to death for the safety and glory of Rome, and plunged, with his horse, headlong into the gaping void. The people rushed after him to the brink, flung in their offerings, and with a surge the lips of the gap came together, and the gulf was forever closed. The place was afterwards known by the name of the Curtian Lake, in honor of this sacrifice.

There are two other stories of this date worth repeating, as giving rise to two great names in Rome. T. Manlius, the future conqueror of the Latins, fought with a gigantic Gaul on the bridge over the Anio on the Salarian road. Slaying his enemy, he took from his neck a chain of gold (torques), which he afterwards wore upon his own. From this the soldiers called him Torquatus, which name his descendants ever afterwards bore.

In a later battle Marcus Valerius fought with a second gigantic Gaul. During the combat a wonderful thing happened. A crow perched on the helmet of the Roman, and continued there as the combatants fought. Occasionally it flew up into the air, and darted down upon the Gaul, striking at his eyes with its beak and claws. The Gaul, confounded by this attack, soon fell by the sword of his foe, and then the crow flew up again, and vanished towards the east. The name of Corvus (crow) was added to that of Valerius, and was long afterwards borne by his descendants.

These stories are rather to be enjoyed than believed. They probably contain more poetry than history, particularly that of Curtius and the gulf. Yet they were accepted as history by the Romans, and are given in all their detail in the fine old work of Livy, the rarest and raciest of the story-tellers of Rome.

ANECDOTES OF THE LATIN AND SAMNITE WARS.

The conquest of Italy by Rome was attended by many interesting events, of which we propose to relate here some of the more striking. The capture and burning of Rome by the Gauls, and the dispersal of her army and people, ruinous as it seemed, was but an event in her career of conquest. The city was no sooner rebuilt than the old régime of war was resumed, and it was no longer a struggle between neighboring cities, but of Rome against powerful confederacies and peoples, such as the Volscians, the Etruscans, the Latins, the Campanians, and the Samnites, the final conquest of which gave her the dominion of Italy.

The war with the Latins was attended with some circumstances showing strongly the stern and indomitable spirit of the Romans. This war was carried into Campania, in Southern Italy; and here, on a celebrated occasion, when the two armies lay encamped in close vicinity on the plain of Capua, the Roman consuls issued a strict order against skirmishing or engaging in single encounters with the enemy. The two peoples were alike in arms and in language, and it was feared that such chance combats might lead to confusion and disaster.

The only man to disobey this order was T. Manlius, the son of one of the consuls. A Latin warrior, Geminus Metius, of Tusculum, challenged young Manlius to meet him in single combat; and the youthful warrior, fired by ambition and warlike zeal, and eager to sustain the honor of Rome, accepted the challenge, despite his father's order. If killed, his fault would be atoned; if successful, victory over a noted warrior must win him pardon and praise.

The duel that ensued was a fierce and gallant one. It ended in the triumph of the young Roman, who laid his antagonist dead at his feet. Shouts of triumph from the Roman soldiers hailed his victory; and when he had despoiled his slain foe of his arms, and borne them triumphantly from the field, the exultation of the Romans was as unbounded as the chagrin of the Latins was deep. Towards his father's tent the young victor proudly went, through exulting lines of troops, and laid his spoils in triumph at the feet of the stern old man.