[356-351 B.C.]
For a moment the people of Cære, the old allies of the Roman people, who had given shelter to their sacred things, their women, and children, in the panic of the Gallic invasion, joined the war; but almost immediately after sued for peace. The Romans, however, remembered this defection. The Tarquinians were again defeated in a great battle. Three hundred and fifty-eight prisoners were scourged and beheaded in the Forum to retaliate for former barbarity. In the year 351 B.C. a peace of forty years was concluded, after a struggle of eight years’ duration.
It was in the very next year after the conclusion of this war that the third inroad of the Gauls took place, of which we have above spoken, when M. Valerius gained his name of Corvus. Thus remarkably was Rome carried through the dangers of intestine strife and surrounding wars. When she was at strife within, her enemies were quiet. Before each new assault commenced, a former foe had retired from the field, and Rome rose stronger from every fall. She had now recovered all the Latin coast land from the Tibur to Circeii; and her increasing importance is shown by a renewed treaty with the great commercial city of Carthage. But a more formidable enemy was now to be encountered than had as yet challenged Rome to conflict, and a larger area opened to her ambition. In the course of a very few years after the last event of which we have spoken the First Samnite War began.[b]
The destruction of Rome by the Gauls is the dividing point between historical and ante-historical Rome, as Ihne[g] justly notes; for the conflagration wiped out not only the records but most of the monuments as well. He complains, however, that it is long after the conflagration before the chronicles become really trustworthy. He doubts equally the story of how Valerius won the name of Corvus and the achievements of L. Furius Camillus. He says in conclusion:
“The result of our investigations is that the whole of the six wars with the Gauls, as Livy[c] relates them, are not much more than stop-gaps, marking points of time at which the annals of the old time have been filled up with edifying and patriotic matter. We can, therefore, infer that a considerable part of the other wars is equally apocryphal, and we may perhaps have the satisfaction of thinking that there were no wars to relate and that the Romans had now and then a little breathing-place.” So extreme an erasure of tradition with all its details will not, however, win the approval of many students of these times.[a]
FOOTNOTES
[33] The aged were doomed to perish under any circumstances (utique), from scarcity of provisions, whether they retired into the Capitol with the military youth, or were left behind in the city.
[34] [As a forewarning here of the comparatively recent Gallic re-invasions of Italy, one may quote what J. J. Ampère[d] says in his L’histoire romaine à Rome: “To terminate cheerfully the story of the geese of Manlius, I will recall a caricature representing a French soldier plucking a goose on the Capitoline Hill; beneath were the words, ‘Vengeance of a Gaul.’”]
[35] It may be observed that each gens et familia clung to the same forenames. Thus Publius, Lucius, Cneius, were favourite forenames of the Cornelii; Caius of the Julii; Appius of the Claudii; and so on.
[36] [And yet, though constitutionally eligible, Licinius could hardly have won the consular tribuneship, for the patricians had practically monopolised the office, as the fasti prove.]