The Gauls were now encamped in the city. At first they attempted to storm the clivus, but were repelled with great loss, which is surprising, since we know that at an earlier time the Romans succeeded in storming it against Appius Herdonius. Afterward they discovered the footsteps of a messenger who had been sent from Veii, in order that the State might be taken care of in due form; for the Romans in the Capitol were patricians, and represented the curies and the Government, whereas those assembled at Veii represented the tribes, but had no leaders. The latter had resolved to recall Camillus, and raise him to the dictatorship. For this reason Pontius Cominius had been sent to Rome to obtain the sanction of the senate and the curies. This was quite in the spirit of the ancient times. If the curies had interdicted him aqua et igni, they alone could recall him, if they previously obtained a resolution of the senate authorizing them to do so; but if he had gone into voluntary exile, and had given up his Roman franchise by becoming a citizen of Ardea before a sentence had been passed upon him by the centuries, it was again in the power of the curies alone, he being a patrician, to recall him as a citizen; and otherwise he could not have become dictator, nor could he have regarded himself as such.
It was the time of the dog-days when the Gauls came to Rome, and as the summer at Rome is always pestilential, especially during the two months and a half before the first of September, the unavoidable consequence must have been, as Livy relates, that the barbarians, bivouacking on the ruins of the city in the open air, were attacked by disease and carried off, like the army of Frederick Barbarossa when encamped before the castle of St. Angelo. The whole army of the Gauls, however, was not in the city, but only as many as were necessary to blockade the garrison of the Capitol; the rest were scattered far and wide over the face of the country, and were ravaging all the unprotected places and isolated farms in Latium; many an ancient town, which is no longer mentioned after this time, may have been destroyed by the Gauls. None but fortified places like Ostia, which could obtain supplies by sea, made a successful resistance, for the Gauls were unacquainted with the art of besieging.
The Ardeatans, whose territory was likewise invaded by the Gauls, opposed them, under the command of Camillus; the Etruscans would seem to have endeavored to avail themselves of the opportunity of recovering Veii, for we are told that the Romans at Veii, commanded by Caedicius, gained a battle against them, and that, encouraged by this success, they began to entertain a hope of regaining Rome, since by this victory they got possession of arms.
A Roman of the name of Fabius Dorso is said to have offered up, in broad daylight, a gentilician sacrifice on the Quirinal; and the astonished Gauls are said to have done him no harm—a tradition which is not improbable.
The provisions in the Capitol were exhausted, but the Gauls themselves being seized with epidemic diseases became tired of their conquests, and were not inclined to settle in a country so far away from their own home. They once more attempted to take the Capitol by storm, having observed that the messenger from Veii had ascended the rock, and come down again near the Porta Carmentalis, below Araceli. The ancient rock is now covered with rubbish, and no longer discernible. The besieged did not think of a storm on that side; it may be that formerly there had in that part been a wall, which had become decayed; and in southern countries an abundant vegetation always springs up between the stones, and if this had actually been neglected it cannot have been very difficult to climb up. The Gauls had already gained a firm footing, as there was no wall at the top—the rock which they stormed was not the Tarpeian, but the Arx—when Manlius, who lived there, was roused by the screaming of the geese: he came to the spot and thrust down those who were climbing up.
This rendered the Gauls still more inclined to commence negotiations; they were, moreover, called back by an inroad of some Alpine tribes into Lombardy, where they had left their wives and children: they offered to depart if the Romans would pay them a ransom of a thousand pounds of gold, to be taken no doubt from the Capitoline treasury. Considering the value of money at that time, the sum was enormous: in the time of Theodosius, indeed, there were people at Rome who possessed several hundredweight of gold, nay, one is said to have had an annual revenue of two hundredweight. There can be no doubt that the Gauls received the sum they demanded, and quitted Rome; that in weighing it they scornfully imposed upon the Romans is very possible, and the vae victis too may be true: we ourselves have seen similar things before the year 1813.
But there can be no truth in the story told by Livy, that while they were disputing Camillus appeared with an army and stopped the proceedings, because the military tribunes had had no right to conclude the treaty. He is there said to have driven the Gauls from the city, and afterward in a twofold battle to have so completely defeated them that not even a messenger escaped. Beaufort, inspired by Gallic patriotism, has most excellently shown what a complete fable this story is. To attempt to disguise the misfortunes of our forefathers by substituting fables in their place is mere childishness. This charge does not affect Livy, indeed, for he copied only what others had written before him; but he did not allow his own conviction to appear as he generally does, for he treats the whole of the early history with a sort of irony, half believing, half disbelieving it.
According to another account in Diodorus, the Gauls besieged a town allied with Rome—its name seems to be mis-written, but is probably intended for Vulsinii—and the Romans relieved it and took back from the Gauls the gold which they had paid them; but this siege of Vulsinii is quite unknown to Livy. A third account in Strabo and also mentioned by Diodorus does not allow this honor to the Romans, but states that the Caerites pursued the Gauls, attacked them in the country of the Sabines, and completely annihilated them. In like manner the Greeks endeavored to disguise the fact that the Gauls took the money from the Delphic treasury, and that in a quite historical period (Olymp. 120). The true explanation is undoubtedly the one found in Polybius, that the Gauls were induced to quit Rome by an insurrection of the Alpine tribes, after it had experienced the extremity of humiliation.
Whatever the enemy had taken as booty was consumed; they had not made any conquests, but only indulged in plunder and devastation; they had been staying at Rome for seven or eight months, and could have gained nothing further than the Capitol and the very money which they received without taking that fortress. The account of Polybius throws light upon many discrepant statements, and all of them, not even excepting Livy's fairy-tale-like embellishment, may be explained by means of it. The Romans attempted to prove that the Gauls had actually been defeated, by relating that the gold afterward taken from the Gauls and buried in the Capitol was double the sum paid to them as a ransom; but it is much more probable that the Romans paid their ransom out of the treasury of the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter and of other temples, and that afterward double this sum was made up by a tax; which agrees with a statement in the history of Manlius, that a tax was imposed for the purpose of raising the Gallic ransom: surely this could not have been done at the time of the siege, when the Romans were scattered in all parts of the country, but must have taken place afterward for the purpose of restoring the money that had been taken. Now if at a later time there actually existed in the Capitol such a quantity of gold, it is clear that it was believed to be a proof that the Gauls had not kept the gold which was paid to them.
Even as late as the time of Cicero and Caesar, the spot was shown at Rome in the Carinae, where the Gauls had heaped up and burned their dead; it was called busta Gallica, which was corrupted in the Middle Ages into Protogallo, whence the church which was built there was in reality called S. Andreas in bustis Gallicis, or, according to the later Latinity, in busta Gallica—busta Gallica not being declined.