destroyed, as Plutarch says, by famine." The meeting can be easily conceived; and though the scene of ruin was dismal to behold throughout the city, the Capitol, at least, was unpolluted, the laws were unbroken, and Rome was again in the possession of her own Romans. Camillus and Manlius, however hostile in former days, now greeted one another as the preservers of their country; and all who pressed around to thank them could have no fears in presence of the hopes the two inspired. The priests hastened to produce the holy relics they had rescued from destruction, and in the midst of sacrifices and vows to the gods, the people were united, and old troubles, for that day, were forgotten. Yet with new troubles, arising from losses and sorrows that no day of triumph could repair, there was sure to be a speedy revival of the old. Lands were wasted; homes were ruined; friends were gone, slain or overwhelmed by their calamities. The feeble were hopeless of recovering strength; the brave were dispirited by the very exigency of the demands upon their courage; and it is recorded as an evidence of the universal depression, that, on the approach of some enemies in arms, the people fled from them as they had fled the Gauls.12 It is equally significant of the change that had befallen their minds as well as their bodies and estates, that nearly the entire people united in the old proposal of removing to Veii. The love of country seemed extinct; but 11 Plut., Cam., 30. the Populifugia. See Niebuhr's 12 Commemorated, afterwards, as Hist., Vol. II. note 1258, and text. |