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CHAPTER VI.

CAMILLUS AND MANLIUS.

"Heu quantum inter se bellum !"-VIRGIL, Æn., VI. 829.

THE old biographer, to whose fondness for a good story and a brave example we largely owe our knowledge of many men in ancient Rome, once interrupted himself with the reflection, that he was telling things "much like poets' tales." But his consolation soon came with the thought, that it was "as dangerous to discredit as to credit such matters too heartily." His judgment is worthy our attention, as we begin upon the lives of Camillus and Manlius, in times uncertain as almost any we have heretofore passed, in order to carry on under their names our account of the liberty of Rome, so far as it was contemporary with them.

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Marcus Furius Camillus, the elder of the two, was earliest in renown. Of lofty birth and commanding temper, he rose through "other honors," as Plutarch calls them, to the censorship; next, and

1 Plut., Cam., 5. 2 Ibid., 6.

3 A. C. 402. Plut., Cam., 2; where his doings in the office are described, especially his compelling unmarried men, "partly by per

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suasion and partly by threat," to espouse the widows of those who had recently fallen in conflict. This does not sound like domestic liberty. See Val. Max., II. 9. 1.

twice, to the consular tribunate; being, a little later, appointed Dictator to conduct the armies against Veii, of whose conquest he obtained the glory. Up to this time, apparently, Camillus had possessed the favor and the admiration of all classes, alike impressed with his heroism and dazzling exploits; but it seems, from the uncertain traditions of his life, that the moment of peace was like the thaw of the wintry fame he had won in war. The people thought his demeanour conceited and ambitious; the poor considered his opposition to their claims for land at Veii unkind; the men who had served under him were indignant at being obliged to restore a part of their spoils, because he pleaded a vow of dedicating a tithe of the plunder to the gods: and as one complaint in similar circumstances leads to another, the popularity of Camillus once touched would be soon dissolved. He became the champion of the severer Patricians, as stern as any amongst them to govern the Plebeians; and when, some few years subsequently, he was accused by a Tribune of having secreted the spoils of Falerii, a city he had subdued, he did not stay to meet his trial, but, conscious of the bitterness aroused against him, he went into exile at Ardea. The Tribes confirmed his banishment, and added a heavy fine.

Marcus Manlius Capitolinus, a soldier and even a hero from his youth, was one of the Consuls in the

4 A. C. 390. Liv., V. 32. of his gallantry. Nat. Hist., VII. Plut., Cam., 11, 12. 29, sect. 3.

5 Pliny enumerates the rewards

year preceding Camillus's exile. Of illustrious descent, he was also strikingly gifted with personal beauty, and with the mental excellences, described by an old historian as "eloquence, dignity, intrepidity, and confidence," that were consistent with his times. Some strong reasons exist for supposing him to have been a personal, or at any rate a political, opponent of Camillus, at the period of whose fall, whether this supposition be true or doubtful, Manlius, though still young, was the most rising man of his order and his nation.

If it were true, as was reported, that Camillus, departing through the gates of Rome, turned back towards the Capitol, and prayed that the people might be brought to feel their need of him whom they had banished, he must have soon believed that the gods accepted and answered his desires. The very next year," a host of Gauls, as they were called, at all events, of rude and mighty barbarians, came down from the North, and, being provoked by the appearance of some ambassadors from Rome in a battle they were fighting with the Etruscans, pressed on to crush the Roman forces by the river Allia, and to destroy the city itself in blood and flames. It seems, as we read the breathless tidings of disaster and ruin, as if the end of Rome were not only prefigured, but arrived.

6 "Eloquentia, dignitate, acrimonia, confidentia pariter præcellebat. Q. Claudius, ap. Aul. Gell., XVII. 2. 7 A. C. 389. Dates are just

here more than usually uncertain. See the narrative in Livy, V. 37-41: it cannot be better told.

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It was more, however, than a single torrent of barbarians could do, to sweep aside the stream for which half the earth was destined to be the channel. While most men fled, with wives and children and all they could hope to save, some to Veii, and some to any and every place of refuge, a few, of stouter hearts, remained, determined to protect the Capitol. These were chiefly the more eminent of the younger citizens or magistrates; and at their head, the first to advise the defence of the citadel and its holy temple, though all things else were lost, was Marcus Manlius, whose family name of Capitolinus appeared to be his natural inspiration to courage in such a cause.9

Not many days, or even hours, after the occupation of the Capitol, its defenders were surprised by the sudden appearance of Pontius Cominius, a young Plebeian, who came, through perils and in the face of death, to tell them that Camillus, supported by the the people of Ardea, having gained some advantages over the Gauls, had been called, by his countrymen at Veii, to take the command of their forces, and was only waiting the consent of such of the magistrates as had survived the recent slaughter, to put himself at the head of those who wished him for their leader. If the band then gathered in the Capitol were, as is very likely, among the adversaries of Camillus, the message sent at his request was perhaps

8 Florus (I. 13) says a thousand; Zonaras (VII. 23) includes their families.

9"Capta urbe, auctor in Capitolium confugiendi fuit." De Vir. Ill., Cap. XXIV. Cf. Æn., VIII. 652.

intended as a bitter taunt; but, on the contrary, he may have thought that his friends outnumbered his foes, or that he would, at all events, consult the only guardians of the laws, to which he meant to prove his fidelity as no Roman had ever done before. He was instantly chosen Dictator, whether by thankful partisans or humbled opponents is little to the purpose; and the brave Cominius bore back a proclamation from the scanty Senate, appointing Camillus to absolute authority over all who still confessed the name of Rome. The tradition of his successes is so evidently exaggerated, that it is safe to read only of his having taken advantage of the reverses of the Gauls among the nations of the southern neighbourhood, and joined his forces to theirs in repelling the barbarians, whose garrison, left in charge of Rome, was compelled to save itself from his hands by surrender of its plunder.10

Meanwhile, the Capitol had been assailed by night, and nearly lost. Its safety and the repulse of the barbarians were ascribed entirely to Manlius, more wakeful than the rest, and to him each one of his companions brought something from his stores, in order to give him the only reward they then had at command. Six months had elapsed since their occupation of the citadel, when the force besieging them was driven from the ruins of the city, and Camillus returned to liberate his countrymen, wellnigh

10 This account is, in some respects, conjectural. Polybius (II. 18) says nothing of Camillus in ac

counting for the retreat of the Gauls, which he imputes to an invasion of their own territories in the North.

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