The History of Rome, Book II - Theodor Mommsen
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The Celts Attack Rome--
Battle on the Allia--
Capture of Rome
For a moment, however, it seemed as if the two peoples, through whose
co-operation Etruria saw her very existence put in jeopardy, were
about to destroy each other, and the reviving power of Rome was to
be trodden under foot by foreign barbarians. This turn of things,
so contrary to what might naturally have been expected, the Romans
brought upon themselves by their own arrogance and shortsightedness.
The Celtic swarms, which had crossed the river after the fall of
Melpum, rapidly overflowed northern Italy--not merely the open country
on the right bank of the Po and along the shore of the Adriatic, but
also Etruria proper to the south of the Apennines. A few years
afterwards (363) Clusium situated in the heart of Etruria (Chiusi, on
the borders of Tuscany and the Papal State) was besieged by the Celtic
Senones; and so humbled were the Etruscans that the Tuscan city in
its straits invoked aid from the destroyers of Veii. Perhaps it would
have been wise to grant it and to reduce at once the Gauls by arms,
and the Etruscans by according to them protection, to a state of
dependence on Rome; but an intervention with aims so extensive, which
would have compelled the Romans to undertake a serious struggle on the
northern Tuscan frontier, lay beyond the horizon of the Roman policy
at that time. No course was therefore left but to refrain from all
interference. Foolishly, however, while declining to send auxiliary
troops, they despatched envoys. With still greater folly these sought
to impose upon the Celts by haughty language, and, when this failed,
they conceived that they might with impunity violate the law of
nations in dealing with barbarians; in the ranks of the Clusines they
took part in a skirmish, and in the course of it one of them stabbed
and dismounted a Gallic officer. The barbarians acted in this case
with moderation and prudence. They sent in the first instance to the
Roman community to demand the surrender of those who had outraged the
law of nations, and the senate was ready to comply with the reasonable
request. But with the multitude compassion for their countrymen
outweighed justice towards the foreigners; satisfaction was refused by
the burgesses; and according to some accounts they even nominated the
brave champions of their fatherland as consular tribunes for the
year 364,(9) which was to be so fatal in the Roman annals. Then the
Brennus or, in other words, the "king of the army" of the Gauls broke
up the siege of Clusium, and the whole Celtic host--the numbers of
which are stated at 70,000 men--turned against Rome. Such expeditions
into unknown land distant regions were not unusual for the Gauls, who
marched as bands of armed emigrants, troubling themselves little as
to the means of cover or of retreat; but it was evident that none in
Rome anticipated the dangers involved in so sudden and so mighty an
invasion. It was not till the Gauls were marching upon Rome that a
Roman military force crossed the Tiber and sought to bar their way.
Not twelve miles from the gates, opposite to the confluence of the
rivulet Allia with the Tiber, the armies met, and a battle took place
on the 18th July, 364. Even now they went into battle--not as against
an army, but as against freebooters--with arrogance and foolhardiness
and under inexperienced leaders, Camillus having in consequence of
the dissensions of the orders withdrawn from taking part in affairs.
Those against whom they were to fight were but barbarians; what need
was there of a camp, or of securing a retreat? These barbarians,
however, were men whose courage despised death, and their mode of
fighting was to the Italians as novel as it was terrible; sword in
hand the Celts precipitated themselves with furious onset on the Roman
phalanx, and shattered it at the first shock. The overthrow was
complete; of the Romans, who had fought with the river in their rear,
a large portion met their death in the attempt to cross it; such as
escaped threw themselves by a flank movement into the neighbouring
Veii. The victorious Celts stood between the remnant of the beaten
army and the capital. The latter was irretrievably abandoned to the
enemy; the small force that was left behind, or that had fled thither,
was not sufficient to garrison the walls, and three days after the
battle the victors marched through the open gates into Rome. Had they
done so at first, as they might have done, not only the city, but the
state also must have been lost; the brief interval gave opportunity
to carry away or to bury the sacred objects, and, what was more
important, to occupy the citadel and to furnish it with provisions for
the exigency. No one was admitted to the citadel who was incapable of
bearing arms--there was not food for all. The mass of the defenceless
dispersed among the neighbouring towns; but many, and in particular a
number of old men of high standing, would not survive the downfall
of the city and awaited death in their houses by the sword of the
barbarians. They came, murdered all they met with, plundered whatever
property they found, and at length set the city on fire on all sides
before the eyes of the Roman garrison in the Capitol. But they had
no knowledge of the art of besieging, and the blockade of the steep
citadel rock was tedious and difficult, because subsistence for the
great host could only be procured by armed foraging parties, and the
citizens of the neighbouring Latin cities, the Ardeates in particular,
frequently attacked the foragers with courage and success.
Nevertheless the Celts persevered, with an energy which in their
circumstances was unparalleled, for seven months beneath the rock,
and the garrison, which had escaped a surprise on a dark night only
in consequence of the cackling of the sacred geese in the Capitoline
temple and the accidental awaking of the brave Marcus Manlius, already
found its provisions beginning to fail, when the Celts received
information as to the Veneti having invaded the Senonian territory
recently acquired on the Po, and were thus induced to accept the
ransom money that was offered to procure their withdrawal. The
scornful throwing down of the Gallic sword, that it might be
outweighed by Roman gold, indicated very truly how matters stood.
The iron of the barbarians had conquered, but they sold their
victory and by selling lost it.
Fruitlessness of the Celtic Victory
The fearful catastrophe of the defeat and the conflagration, the
18th of July and the rivulet of the Allia, the spot where the sacred
objects were buried, and the spot where the surprise of the citadel
had been repulsed--all the details of this unparalleled event--were
transferred from the recollection of contemporaries to the imagination
of posterity; and we can scarcely realize the fact that two thousand
years have actually elapsed since those world-renowned geese showed
greater vigilance than the sentinels at their posts. And yet
--although there was an enactment in Rome that in future, on occasion
of a Celtic invasion no legal privilege should give exemption from
military service; although dates were reckoned by the years from
the conquest of the city; although the event resounded throughout
the whole of the then civilized world and found its way even into
the Grecian annals--the battle of the Allia and its results can
scarcely be numbered among those historical events that are fruitful
of consequences. It made no alteration at all in political relations.
When the Gauls had marched off again with their gold--which only a
legend of late and wretched invention represents the hero Camillus as
having recovered for Rome--and when the fugitives had again made their
way home, the foolish idea suggested by some faint-hearted prudential
politicians, that the citizens should migrate to Veii, was set aside
by a spirited speech of Camillus; houses arose out of the ruins
hastily and irregularly--the narrow and crooked streets of Rome owed
their origin to this epoch; and Rome again stood in her old commanding
position. Indeed it is not improbable that this occurrence
contributed materially, though not just at the moment, to diminish
the antagonism between Rome and Etruria, and above all to knit more
closely the ties of union between Latium and Rome. The conflict
between the Gauls and the Romans was not, like that between Rome and
Etruria or between Rome and Samnium, a collision of two political
powers which affect and modify each other; it may be compared to
those catastrophes of nature, after which the organism, if it is not
destroyed, immediately resumes its equilibrium. The Gauls often
returned to Latium: as in the year 387, when Camillus defeated them
at Alba--the last victory of the aged hero, who had been six times
military tribune with consular powers, and five times dictator, and
had four times marched in triumph to the Capitol; in the year 393,
when the dictator Titus Quinctius Pennus encamped opposite to them
not five miles from the city at the bridge of the Anio, but before any
encounter took place the Gallic host marched onward to Campania; in
the year 394, when the dictator Quintus Servilius Ahala fought in
front of the Colline gate with the hordes returning from Campania; in
the year 396, when the dictator Gaius Sulpicius Peticus inflicted on
them a signal defeat; in the year 404, when they even spent the winter
encamped upon the Alban mount and joined with the Greek pirates along
the coast for plunder, till Lucius Furius Camillus, the son of the
celebrated general, in the following year dislodged them--an incident
which came to the ears of Aristotle who was contemporary (370-432) in
Athens. But these predatory expeditions, formidable and troublesome
as they may have been, were rather incidental misfortunes than events
of political significance; and their most essential result was, that
the Romans were more and more regarded by themselves and by foreigners
as the bulwark of the civilized nations of Italy against the onset
of the dreaded barbarians--a view which tended more than is usually
supposed to further their subsequent claim to universal empire.
Further Conquests of Rome in Etruria--
South Etruria Roman
The Tuscans, who had taken advantage of the Celtic attack on Rome to
assail Veii, had accomplished nothing, because they had appeared in
insufficient force; the barbarians had scarcely departed, when the
heavy arm of Latium descended on the Tuscans with undiminished weight.
After the Etruscans had been repeatedly defeated, the whole of
southern Etruria as far as the Ciminian hills remained in the hands
of the Romans, who formed four new tribes in the territories of Veii,
Capena, and Falerii (367), and secured the northern boundary by
establishing the fortresses of Sutrium (371) and Nepete (381).
With rapid steps this fertile region, covered with Roman colonists,
became completely Romanized. About 396 the nearest Etruscan towns,
Tarquinii, Caere, and Falerii, attempted to revolt against the Roman
encroachments, and the deep exasperation which these had aroused in
Etruria was shown by the slaughter of the whole of the Roman prisoners
taken in the first campaign, three hundred and seven in number, in the
market-place of Tarquinii; but it was the exasperation of impotence.
In the peace (403) Caere, which as situated nearest to the Romans
suffered the heaviest retribution, was compelled to cede half its
territory to Rome, and with the diminished domain which was left
to it to withdraw from the Etruscan league, and to enter into the
relationship of subjects to Rome which had in the meanwhile been
constituted primarily for individual Latin communities. It seemed,
however, not advisable to leave to this more remote community alien in
race from the Roman such communal independence as was still retained
by the subject communities of Latium; the Caerite community received
the Roman franchise not merely without the privilege of electing or
of being elected at Rome, but also subject to the withholding of
self-administration, so that the place of magistrates of its own
was as regards justice and the census taken by those of Rome, and
a representative (-praefectus-) of the Roman praetor conducted
the administration on the spot--a form of subjection, which in
state-law first meets us here, whereby a state which had hitherto
been independent became converted into a community continuing to
subsist -de jure-, but deprived of all power of movement on its own part.
Not long afterwards (411) Falerii, which had preserved its original
Latin nationality even under Tuscan rule, abandoned the Etruscan league
and entered into perpetual alliance with Rome; and thereby the whole
of southern Etruria became in one form or other subject to Roman
supremacy. In the case of Tarquinii and perhaps of northern Etruria
generally, the Romans were content with restraining them for a
lengthened period by a treaty of peace for 400 months (403).
Pacification of Northern Italy
In northern Italy likewise the peoples that had come into collision
and conflict gradually settled on a permanent footing and within more
defined limits. The migrations over the Alps ceased, partly perhaps
in consequence of the desperate defence which the Etruscans made
in their more restricted home, and of the serious resistance of the
powerful Romans, partly perhaps also in consequence of changes unknown
to us on the north of the Alps. Between the Alps and the Apennines,
as far south as the Abruzzi, the Celts were now generally the ruling
nation, and they were masters more especially of the plains and rich
pastures; but from the lax and superficial nature of their settlement
their dominion took no deep root in the newly acquired land and by no
means assumed the shape of exclusive possession. How matters stood in
the Alps, and to what extent Celtic settlers became mingled there with
earlier Etruscan or other stocks, our unsatisfactory information as
to the nationality of the later Alpine peoples does not permit us
to ascertain; only the Raeti in the modern Grisons and Tyrol may be
described as a probably Etruscan stock. The Umbrians retained the
valleys of the Apennines, and the Veneti, speaking a different
language, kept possession of the north-eastern portion of the valley
of the Po. Ligurian tribes maintained their footing in the western
mountains, dwelling as far south as Pisa and Arezzo, and separating
the Celt-land proper from Etruria. The Celts dwelt only in the
intermediate flat country, the Insubres and Cenomani to the north
of the Po, the Boii to the south, and--not to mention smaller tribes
--the Senones on the coast of the Adriatic, from Ariminum to Ancona,
in the so-called "country of the Gauls" (-ager Gallicus-). But even
there Etruscan settlements must have continued partially at least to
subsist, somewhat as Ephesus and Miletus remained Greek under the
supremacy of the Persians. Mantua at any rate, which was protected
by its insular position, was a Tuscan city even in the time of the
empire, and Atria on the Po also, where numerous discoveries of vases
have been made, appears to have retained its Etruscan character; the
description of the coasts that goes under the name of Scylax, composed
about 418, calls the district of Atria and Spina Tuscan land. This
alone, moreover, explains how Etruscan corsairs could render the
Adriatic unsafe till far into the fifth century, and why not only
Dionysius of Syracuse covered its coasts with colonies, but even
Athens, as a remarkable document recently discovered informs us,
resolved about 429 to establish a colony in the Adriatic for
the protection of seafarers against the Tyrrhene pirates.
But while more or less of an Etruscan character continued to mark
these regions, it was confined to isolated remnants and fragments of
their earlier power; the Etruscan nation no longer reaped the benefit
of such gains as were still acquired there by individuals in peaceful
commerce or in maritime war. On the other hand it was probably
from these half-free Etruscans that the germs proceeded of such
civilization as we subsequently find among the Celts and Alpine
peoples in general.(10) The very fact that the Celtic hordes in
the plains of Lombardy, to use the language of the so-called Scylax,
abandoned their warrior-life and took to permanent settlement, must
in part be ascribed to this influence; the rudiments moreover of
handicrafts and arts and the alphabet came to the Celts in Lombardy,
and in fact to the Alpine peoples as far as the modern Styria,
through the medium of the Etruscans.
Etruria Proper at Peace and on the Decline
Thus the Etruscans, after the loss of their possessions in Campania
and of the whole district to the north of the Apennines and to the
south of the Ciminian Forest, remained restricted to very narrow
bounds; their season of power and of aspiration had for ever passed
away. The closest reciprocal relations subsisted between this
external decline and the internal decay of the nation, the seeds
of which indeed were doubtless already deposited at a far earlier
period. The Greek authors of this age are full of descriptions of
the unbounded luxury of Etruscan life: poets of Lower Italy in the
fifth century of the city celebrate the Tyrrhenian wine, and the
contemporary historians Timaeus and Theopompus delineate pictures of
Etruscan unchastity and of Etruscan banquets, such as fall nothing
short of the worst Byzantine or French demoralization. Unattested as
may be the details in these accounts, the statement at least appears
to be well founded, that the detestable amusement of gladiatorial
combats--the gangrene of the later Rome and of the last epoch of
antiquity generally--first came into vogue among the Etruscans. At
any rate on the whole they leave no doubt as to the deep degeneracy
of the nation. It pervaded even its political condition. As far
as our scanty information reaches, we find aristocratic tendencies
prevailing, in the same way as they did at the same period in Rome,
but more harshly and more perniciously. The abolition of royalty,
which appears to have been carried out in all the cities of Etruria
about the time of the siege of Veii, called into existence in the
several cities a patrician government, which experienced but slight
restraint from the laxity of the federal bond. That bond but seldom
succeeded in combining all the Etruscan cities even for the defence of
the land, and the nominal hegemony of Volsinii does not admit of the
most remote comparison with the energetic vigour which the leadership
of Rome communicated to the Latin nation. The struggle against the
exclusive claim put forward by the old burgesses to all public offices
and to all public usufructs, which must have destroyed even the Roman
state, had not its external successes enabled it in some measure to
satisfy the demands of the oppressed proletariate at the expense of
foreign nations and to open up other paths to ambition--that struggle
against the exclusive rule and (what was specially prominent in
Etruria) the priestly monopoly of the clan-nobility--must have ruined
Etruria politically, economically, and morally. Enormous wealth,
particularly in landed property, became concentrated in the hands of a
few nobles, while the masses were impoverished; the social revolutions
which thence arose increased the distress which they sought to remedy;
and, in consequence of the impotence of the central power, no course
at last remained to the distressed aristocrats-- e. g. in Arretium
in 453, and in Volsinii in 488--but to call in the aid of the Romans,
who accordingly put an end to the disorder but at the same time
extinguished the remnant of independence. The energies of the nation
were broken from the day of Veii and Melpum. Earnest attempts were
still once or twice made to escape from the Roman supremacy, but in
such instances the stimulus was communicated to the Etruscans from
without--from another Italian stock, the Samnites.
Notes for Book II Chapter IV
1. I. X. Phoenicians and Italians in Opposition to the Hellenes
2. --Fiaron o Deinomeneos kai toi Surakosioi toi Di Turan
apo Kumas.--
3. I. X. Home of the Greek Immigrants
4. Hecataeus (after 257 u. c.) and Herodotus also (270-after 345)
only know Hatrias as the delta of the Po and the sea that washes
its shores (O. Muller, Etrusker, i. p. 140; Geogr. Graeci min. ed.
C. Muller, i. p. 23). The appellation of Adriatic sea, in its more
extended sense, first occurs in the so-called Scylax about 418 U. C.
5. II. II. Coriolanus
6. -Pleraque Gallia duas res industriosissime persequitur: rem
militarem et argute loqui- (Cato, Orig, l. ii. fr. 2. Jordan).
7. It has recently been maintained by expert philologists that there
is a closer affinity between the Celts and Italians than there is even
between the latter and the Hellenes. In other words they hold that
the branch of the great tree, from which the peoples of Indo-Germanic
extraction in the west and south of Europe have sprung, divided itself
in the first instance into Greeks and Italo-Celts, and that the latter
at a considerably later period became subdivided into Italians and
Celts. This hypothesis commends itself much to acceptance in a
geographical point of view, and the facts which history presents may
perhaps be likewise brought into harmony with it, because what has
hitherto been regarded as Graeco-Italian civilization may very
well have been Graeco-Celto-Italian--in fact we know nothing of the
earliest stage of Celtic culture. Linguistic investigation, however,
seems not to have made as yet such progress as to warrant the
insertion of its results in the primitive history of the peoples.
8. The legend is related by Livy, v. 34, and Justin, xxiv. 4, and
Caesar also has had it in view (B. G. vi. 24). But the association
of the migration of Bellovesus with the founding of Massilia, by which
the former is chronologically fixed down to the middle of the second
century of Rome, undoubtedly belongs not to the native legend, which
of course did not specify dates, but to later chronologizing research;
and it deserves no credit. Isolated incursions and immigrations may
have taken place at a very early period; but the great overflowing of
northern Italy by the Celts cannot be placed before the age of the
decay of the Etruscan power, that is, not before the second half
of the third century of the city.
In like manner, after the judicious investigations of Wickham and
Cramer, we cannot doubt that the line of march of Bellovesus, like
that of Hannibal, lay not over the Cottian Alps (Mont Genevre) and
through the territory of the Taurini, but over the Graian Alps (the
Little St. Bernard) and through the territory of the Salassi. The
name of the mountain is given by Livy doubtless not on the authority
of the legend, but on his own conjecture.
Whether the representation that the Italian Boii came through the more
easterly pass of the Poenine Alps rested on the ground of a genuine
legendary reminiscence, or only on the ground of an assumed connection
with the Boii dwelling to the north of the Danube, is a question that
must remain undecided.
9. This is according to the current computation 390 B. C.; but, in
fact, the capture of Rome occurred in Ol. 98, 1 = 388 B. C., and has
been thrown out of its proper place merely by the confusion of the
Roman calendar.
10. I. XIV. Development of Alphabets in Italy
CHAPTER V
Subjugation of the Latins and Campanians by Rome
The Hegemony of Rome over Latium Shaken and Re-established
The great achievement of the regal period was the establishment of the
sovereignty of Rome over Latium under the form of hegemony. It is in
the nature of the case evident that the change in the constitution of
Rome could not but powerfully affect both the relations of the Roman
state towards Latium and the internal organization of the Latin
communities themselves; and that it did so, is obvious from tradition.
The fluctuations which the revolution in Rome occasioned in the
Romano-Latin confederacy are attested by the legend, unusually vivid
and various in its hues, of the victory at the lake Regillus, which
the dictator or consul Aulus Postumius (255? 258?) is said to have
gained over the Latins with the help of the Dioscuri, and still more
definitely by the renewal of the perpetual league between Rome and
Latium by Spurius Cassius in his second consulate (261). These
narratives, however, give us no information as to the main matter,
the legal relation between the new Roman republic and the Latin
confederacy; and what from other sources we learn regarding that
relation comes to us without date, and can only be inserted here
with an approximation to probability.
Original Equality of Rights between Rome and Latium
The nature of a hegemony implies that it becomes gradually converted
into sovereignty by the mere inward force of circumstances; and the
Roman hegemony over Latium formed no exception to the rule. It was
based upon the essential equality of rights between the Roman state
on the one side and the Latin confederacy on the other;(1) but at
least in matters of war and in the treatment of the acquisitions
thereby made this relation between the single state on the one hand
and the league of states on the other virtually involved a hegemony.
According to the original constitution of the league not only was the
right of making wars and treaties with foreign states--in other words,
the full right of political self-determination--reserved in all
probability both to Rome and to the individual towns of the Latin
league; and when a joint war took place, Rome and Latium probably
furnished the like contingent, each, as a rule, an "army" of 8400
men;(2) but the chief command was held by the Roman general, who then
nominated the officers of the staff, and so the leaders-of-division
(-tribuni militum-), according to his own choice. In case of victory
the moveable part of the spoil, as well as the conquered territory,
was shared between Rome and the confederacy; when the establishment of
fortresses in the conquered territory was resolved on, their garrisons
and population were composed partly of Roman, partly of confederate
colonists; and not only so, but the newly-founded community was
received as a sovereign federal state into the Latin confederacy
and furnished with a seat and vote in the Latin diet.