Helmet and spear

by Alfred John Church

FOOTNOTES:

[28] Tumultus.

[29] A very similar story is told of the coming of the Moors into Spain. It is quite possible that in both cases the invaders may have received help, in the way of guidance or information, from some one who had an injury to avenge; but the national movement itself must have had some deeper and more powerful cause.

[30] These officers, "Military Tribunes with Consular power," to give their full title, were sometimes elected in place of the two Consuls. According to Livy this was done nearly fifty times between the years 445-367 B.C. The arrangement had its origin in the difficulty between the patricians and the plebeians. The former could not reconcile themselves to the ideas of a plebeian consul. After the reconciliation of the two orders by the compromise known as the Licinian Rogations, it was not done again.

II

APOLLO THE DEFENDER

We need not follow the story of Rome and the Gauls through its details. Time after time we find them leagued with the nations of Italy, when these were at war with the great power which was slowly compelling them either to subjection or to alliance. We find them, for instance, fighting side by side with the Samnites at Sentinum (295 B.C.), and with the Etrurians at the Vadimonian Lake (283 B.C.). But they made no really formidable attack on Rome for a long period after 390. The early part of the third century B.C. was a period of great unrest among the tribes on both sides of the Alps. In 279 this culminated in an invasion of Southern Europe so formidable that though Rome was not immediately concerned with it, some account of it must be given.

According to the narrative of Pausanias, who introduces the story as a digression in his description of Delphi, the Gauls invaded Greece under the leadership of a certain Brennus, the same name, it will be observed, as that borne by the conqueror of Rome (the word Brennus has been said to mean "king"; but Celtic scholars are not agreed upon the point). His forces are said to have amounted to 150,000 infantry, a figure on which the authorities are fairly unanimous, and cavalry variously estimated at from 60,000 to 10,000.[31] The Greeks, though in a very depressed condition, roused themselves to resist. It was not a choice, as it had been two centuries before, between freedom and servitude; it was a question of life or death. The barbarians spared no one, and if they could not be checked in their advance, Greece would be turned into a desert. The stand was to be made, as of old, at Thermopylæ. The comparison between the forces led by Leonidas and those now assembled is interesting. The most numerous contingent was from a nation which scarcely appears in the history of Greece at its best days, the Ætolians. "Very numerous and including every arm," says Pausanias. Their heavy-armed infantry numbered 9,000. The other figures he does not give, or they have disappeared from his text. The whole force may have amounted to between thirty and forty thousand.

A battle that was fought in the Pass ended greatly to the advantage of the Greeks. The Gauls with their long and unwieldy swords and cumbrous shields were no match for their antagonists, though they fought with desperate valour. Their cavalry, the strongest arm they possessed, could not act on account of the nature of the ground. The result was that they were driven back with very heavy loss, while the Greeks had but forty killed.

Brennus, who seems to have had some military ability, seems to have become aware that the Ætolians made up the most numerous and effective part of the Greek army. He conceived the idea of detaching them by sending a force under his second-in-command to ravage Ætolia. The stratagem succeeded. The Ætolians, on hearing of the movement, hastened to march to the defence of their country. They were too late to save two of their frontier towns, which were stormed and sacked in the most brutal manner. But they were in time to exact a heavy vengeance from the barbarians. Of the fifty thousand who had been detached on this expedition, less than half returned to the camp at Thermopylæ.