CHAPTER XVII

THE GALLIC WARS OF ROME

I.

THE EVIDENCE FOR THE PERIOD

THE value of the sources for early Roman history has already been discussed generally in chap. 10, but it is necessary to add a few remarks here upon the character of the literary tradition relating to the Gallic Wars in particular and upon the way in which that tradition has filtered down to us. At the outset the historian is hampered by complete lack of contemporary evidence: Gallic sources there were none, the Etruscan have vanished, and there remain no early Roman accounts. Our tradition appears to be derived from two main currents: the first Greek and more especially Western Greek, as represented in the general History of Italy composed by Timaeus of Tauromenium (352-256 BC), who gathered up in his synthesis a host of earlier Western writers such as Philistus, Lycus of Rhegium and Aristoxenus of Tarentum, and the scattered notices of Ephorus, Aristotle and Heracleides Ponticus on Rome or on the Gauls. Although all this body of literature has reached us in but meagre fragments, it is reflected in Polybius and in a lesser degree in Diodorus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Trogus, and even to some extent in Roman annalistic.

This last is the second main current: of its comparative lateness and of the faults which tend to vitiate it mention has already been made; on this period we need but point out how, for example, the ransoming of Rome was transformed into something more agreeable to Roman pride and the figure of Camillus enlarged to the heroic proportions suitable to a saviour of the state. Of the annalists themselves, such as L. Cassius Hemina, P. Clodius, Q. Claudius Quadrigarius and others, very little has survived, but they can be traced in Polybius, Diodorus, Livy, and Plutarch, who drew extensively upon them, and in a more fragmentary way in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Appian, Dio Cassius, and others.

First in order of merit comes Polybius, who unfortunately only furnishes a general outline, which can, however, be filled in by Trogus; both these represent, at any rate in part, the Greek tradition directly and independently of Roman annalistic tradition. Second comes Diodorus, who appears to follow the older annalistic, and third Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Appian and Dio Cassius, who introduce elements from later annalistic tradition. But such a classification as this, though useful as a general guide, must not be taken too rigidly; to exclude the later annalistic would, in the opinion of the present writer, be as grave an error in historical method and as damaging to historical truth as a blind adherence to its statements in preference to all others.

But while the literary tradition is imperfect and needs careful handling, much can be gleaned from the auxiliary sciences such as epigraphy, the study of place-names and archaeology. In spite of the late composition of the Fasti triumphales and the influence of annalistic upon it, it can sometimes provide a useful controlling factor. The study of place-names, particularly in Cisalpine Gaul, affords us useful indications of the extent of the Etruscan domination at the time of the Gallic invasions. On the cultural side archaeology furnishes valuable information: for example, excavations at Felsina and Marzabotto have revealed what was the manner of life in the Etruscan cities of that region when the storm burst upon them, while the later Gallic cemeteries found at Montefortino, Ornavasso, Soldo, or Bologna throw a flood of light upon the life and habits of the invaders themselves, and the gradual fusion of Celtic and Etruscan civilizations. Lastly, excavations in Rome itself have been of great value: the Palatine and Forum have yielded important indications as to the extent of the city that the Gauls sacked, and the manner in which it was fortified after that disaster. All these pieces of evidence, in addition to the literary sources, lie ready to the hand of the historian of the Gallic Wars.

II.

THE GALLIC CONQUEST OF NORTHERN ITALY

In 391 BC, at Clusium in Etruria, Romans and Gauls for the first time met face to face. This crisis in Roman history, marking as it does the beginning of the long series of Gallic Wars, was the result of two parallel and simultaneous processes: the conquest of northern Italy by the Gauls, and the conquest of southern Etruria by the Romans; and it is these two decisive events that we have first to describe.

Towards the end of the fifth century b.c. the Gauls debouched from the passes of the Alps and entered northern Italy. For more than a century the greater part of this territory had been in the hands of the Etruscans. Inscriptions and utensils which have been discovered, together with the linguistic evidence of place-names, suggest the approximate limits of their domination. In the plain of the Po this ended roughly where the mountains begin, for the Alps and the Apennines with their foothills were still held by their original inhabitants, the Ligurians. East of the Adige stretched the territory of the Veneti, who had always succeeded in preserving their independence and their original forms of civilization. Along the Adriatic the coast lay under Etruscan rule from the Po delta as far south as what is now Pesaro.

The advance-guard of the Gauls was formed by the Insubres. Defeating the Etruscans near the Ticino, they captured Melpum and founded what is now Milan. Attracted by their success, other bands of invaders swept in successive waves into northern Italy: the Cenomani under Etitovius settled round Brescia and Verona, the Lepontii between the Simplon and Lake Maggiore, the Libici and the Salluvii on the banks of the Ticino1. Henceforth they occupied the whole of Italy north of the Po, with the exception of the territory of the Veneti. The Etruscans retained only the district south of the river, where the possession of their capital, Felsina, and the proximity of their mother-country enabled them in the years that followed to offer a more vigorous and prolonged resistance to the invaders. But new bands of Gauls, the Boii and the Lingones, in turn crossed the Alps and descended upon Italy. They were forced to push on farther beyond the regions occupied by the earlier arrivals. Crossing the Po on rafts, they defeated the Umbro-Etruscans and settled on the right bank of the river in Emilia, between the pass of the Stradella and Ravenna. The Senones, the latest comers of all, became henceforward the spearhead of the Celtic thrust southward: they pushed back the Umbrian population and settled along the coast of the Adriatic from the Utus to the Aesis.

That this advance of the Celtic invaders was not effected without resistance is certain from the archaeological evidence. The funeral stelae of Bologna, historic documents of the first importance, show numerous battle-scenes, in which Etruscans and Gauls are at grips; and the ruins of the ancient Etruscan city laid bare at Marzabotto, where a thick layer of ashes covers the foundations of public buildings and private houses like a shroud, where skeletons are scattered over the soil and piled up in the wells,  and the ground is thick with a medley of Gallic and Etruscan weapons, are still a true and moving memorial of the grim drama in which the Etruscans of the Po were destroyed. Not only was their resistance vigorous: it was also long sustained. In the necropolis of Felsina have been found Attic vases made at Athens about 370 BC, and such vases could hardly have been buried as funerary offerings until at least fifty years later. Felsina, then, the Etruscan capital, seems to have resisted till the middle of the fourth century BC, and during this period the extension of its commerce and the luxury of its civilization prove it to have remained at the height of its prosperity. Finally, the archaeological evidence on this point is confirmed and completed by historical tradition. In his Periplus, compiled between 338 and 335, the Pseudo-Scylax bears witness to the presence of Etruscans along the Adriatic from Umbria to the southern arm of the Po, which flowed by Spina, while to the north of that line, as far as Hadria, the coast was already in the hands of the Gauls. It seems therefore that the conquest of northern Italy was not completed until two-thirds or three-quarters of a century had elapsed after the moment when, towards 400 BC, the advanceguards of the great Celtic invasion passed the Alps.

The gradual Gallic conquest of this region may be explained as due to two fundamental causes, the one general, the other particular. In the Po valley, as in other places where the Etruscans were permanently settled, for instance in Campania and Etruria proper, they only formed a minority, a staff, as it were, of officers and technical experts. The bulk of the population remained the original inhabitants of the country, Ligurians in the Alpine foothills and the Apennines, Umbrians in the plains of the Po and on the Adriatic coast. The Etruscans were too few in numbers to occupy the whole of the territory with either advantage or safety; accordingly they had concentrated in the urban centres placed where they might command the most important routes of approach and strategic points. Such were Melpum, Verona and Mantua at the foot of the Alpine passes, Parma, Modena and Bologna to the south of the Po along what was to be later the Via Aemilia, and Pisaurum, Ariminum, Ravenna and Adria along the coast of the Adriatic. City-life was for the Etruscans the basis of political administration; and the country, where the original racial elements still predominated, played but an inferior part. Such conditions were essentially favourable to the rapid advance and ultimate success of the invaders.

In the second place, the decadence which overtook all the Etruscans from the end of the sixth century onwards made its effects felt in Padane Etruria as elsewhere, and its intensity became the greater as the distance from the mother-country, Etruria proper, increased. This retrogression, after the brilliant advance of the preceding centuries which reached its farthest point in the sixth century BC, shows itself alike in loss of territory and in decline in national character. Political and social upheavals, the reaction of the native population so long suppressed, incessant attacks by neighbouring peoples, the disappearance of the military spirit, the taste for luxury, a general moral enervation, all these are the vital causes which came into play in Padane Etruria, and provided the ultimate explanation of the Etruscans’ fall.

The country districts, in which the Etruscan element was small or non-existent, and where perhaps the invader found the original Umbrian population ready to plot against its masters, were the first to be subdued. The towns, on the other hand, where the dominant race had always concentrated and the population was being continually swelled by the arrival of Etruscan refugees from the countryside, offered a sterner and longer resistance, aided at once by the military organization of the Etruscans and by the lack of siege-engines on the side of the attackers. Thus it was that Felsina contrived to hold out until at least the middle of the fourth century and the towns on the Adriatic coast remained in Etruscan hands for yet another twenty years.

The Etruscan domination in northern Italy had been based on two distinct and complementary elements: an Etruscan population, and Etruscan civilization. In comparison with the inhabitants of the plains of the Po, the Etruscan settlers had never been more than a small minority, owing their strength to their military qualities and their superior civilization. In the course of the long struggle against the Celtic invaders they must have suffered severe losses. Some retreated before the uninterrupted advance of the invaders and regained their native Etruria, others, whether of their own free will or driven by superior force, emigrated to the foothills of the Rhaetic Alps, where they re-appear later as an element in the Rhaeto-Euganean population: a large number, probably the majority, who were held back by various ties of interest, remained in northern Italy, and, as in Campania, ended by becoming merged with the conquerors. Nevertheless there is evidence of their influence and power both north and south of the Po for some time after. Mantua, both in institutions and language, retained its character as an Etruscan town for many years. The Etruscan elements which were concentrated round Brescia and Verona still retained their vigour, and in the course of the struggles between Gauls and Romans their decisive influence is more than once reflected in the policy of the new masters of the country, the Cenomani.

So far as the pre-Etruscan populations were concerned the Gauls refrained from a policy of extermination. The Ligurians were pressed back into the two mountainous zones of the Alps and the Apennines—at the beginning of the Empire the Gaul ruled the plains, the Ligurian the mountains. Sometimes they were assimilated and a process, analogous to that which produced the mixed race of Celtiberians in Spain, the Celto-Greeks in Asia Minor, and the Celto-Scythians in the plains of eastern Europe, produced a Celto-Ligurian people in the maritime Alps. There remained only the Veneti. Sheltered behind the deep waters of the Adige, they succeeded in defending their independence against the Gauls as they had done before against the Etruscans. In 390 and again in 302 BC history shows them at war with the Cisalpine Gauls.

The conquest of northern Italy by the Gauls raised a second problem, a problem of civilization. The two cultures, Etruscan and Celtic, that of the conquered and that of the conquerors, were face to face. The former was infinitely the richer and more brilliant: but, of necessity, it had suffered from the blow which had broken Etruscan domination in the plains of the Po. The Gauls brought with them from the north the civilization of the second Iron Age, known as La Tène, which is exactly that revealed by the Gallic cemeteries in northern Italy immediately after the conquest. These barbarous nomad warriors, ever seeking adventure, had no method of exploiting the soil except by stock-breeding. Thus, the process of their settlement in Cisalpine Gaul still presents a phase of instability and flux: it is at this period that bands of robbers from this region, now become the centre of Italian Celticism, spread over the rest of the peninsula ranging as far as the shores of the Ionian Sea and pillaging practically the whole of Italy. But presently the natural richness of the fertile plains of the Po, and the sight of the agricultural wealth realized by the Etruscans, attracted them towards cultivation of the soil: they settled down, and thanks to their inborn adaptability, one of the fundamental characteristics of the race, became skilful farmers. Polybius, who visited the country half a century after its conquest by the Romans, was deeply impressed by its agricultural riches.

The luxurious, seductive civilization of the Etruscans, which flourished chiefly in the towns, soon attracted the Gallic aristocracy who with all the enthusiasm of their race eagerly adopted its products. Of this the tombs of certain Gallic cemeteries, built after the conquest, provide in their lowest strata full and reliable evidence. Such are the necropolis of Filottrano, near Ancona, of the second half of the fourth century BC, and that of Montefortino near Arcevia in the territory of the Senones, which belongs to the end of the fourth and the beginning of the third century. Here are arms and equipment, in particular the iron helmet bequeathed by the Etruscans, side by side with the sword introduced by the Gauls: utensils and ornaments, collars, bracelets, mirrors, scent-bottles, combs: household appliances, such as bronze tools, candelabra and basins, and finally pottery, in fact, all the products of a wealthy refined society, bearing witness to the force and variety of the influence exercised by Etruscan civilization on the conquerors.

But two points should be noted. First, this influence does not appear uniform throughout northern Italy. On the very borders of Etruria, in eastern Emilia and on the Adriatic shore, it is strong: but it grows weaker as the distance increases from the source of this civilization, and the Gauls north of the Po preserve far more of their original traditional culture than the other invaders. This fact is seen in its most striking and concrete form if we compare two series of Gallic cemeteries; on the one side those of Bologna, Filottrano and Montefortino, the last two in the Senones’ territory, on the other that of Ornavasso (second century BC), in the province of Novara among the Lepontii, or that of the Soldo near Alzate in Brianza which belong to the same period. In the second place, archaeological discoveries in the region of Bologna prove that the influence of Etruscan civilization grew steadily less and less as the reminders of the past became effaced. Under Etruscan rule, the town had held the chief place and it was from the towns that civilization radiated over the countryside: with the Gallic conquest the countryside once again comes into its own. The Cisalpine Gaul which the Romans conquered and Polybius described has become a land of peasants, and it was not until the Romanization of the country that the characteristic civilization of the Mediterranean area made its victorious re-entry.

III.

THE GALLIC CATASTROPHE

While the Gauls, once the conquest of the Po valley was complete, were pushing forward to the south, Rome after the fall of Veii had continued her advance to the north. Capena and Falerii, recognizing the Roman menace, had leagued themselves with Veii. Their ally fell in 396 BC, and their own turn came swiftly. Capena fell in 395, and the next year, after the campaign of Camillus, Falerii was forced to recognize the supremacy of Rome. Sutrium and Nepete soon followed suit. This time the great cities of central Etruria abandoned their egoism and their indolence and were stirred to the depths. But Volsinii, the holy city of Etruria, was subdued in 391 and forced to sue for peace, which Rome granted to her in the form of a twenty years’ truce. These victories had a repercussion even on the eastern and southern frontiers of Latium, where the Aequi and Volsci after several defeats ceased from hostilities. By the conquest of southern Etruria, the Roman State acquired the natural frontier of the Ciminian forest and the hills by Lake Sabatinus: and the occupation of the two strong points, Sutrium and Nepete, ‘barriers against Etruria and gates to Rome’ as Livy vividly describes them, henceforward safeguarded her territory from hostile attack on the north. The circle of her international relations was growing: immediately after the capture of Veii, the Senate dedicated, as we have seen, a gold krater at Delphi, and entered into friendly relations with the people of the Lipari Islands. This first appearance of the name Roman in Greece and on the coasts of Sicily is significant. The insignificant city of the fifth century has grown wings: a new epoch is beginning. At this moment, an unforeseen event, the disaster of the Gallic invasion, was suddenly to lay low the edifice that she had built. At one blow Roman authority was again reduced to the critical position from which only a century of desperate fighting had rescued her.

It was the year 391 BC. One day without warning a band of Gauls—30,000 according to Diodorus—under a leader whom history calls Brennus, crossed the Apennines and appeared before the Etruscan city of Clusium. Who were these Gauls and what was their object? To the first of these questions the most trustworthy account, that of Polybius, gives no precise answer: yet he seems to suggest that they were not Gauls who were already established in the north, but Celts from beyond the Alps. The tradition of the annalists, which is already reflected in Diodorus, makes them Senones. To reconcile these two versions, it is possible to assume that they were Senones reinforced for their raid by other Celtic elements. What did they seek? Tradition says land, but this is open to doubt. At the moment, the conquest of northern Italy by the Gauls had only been in progress a short time, a few decades at most; the number of immigrants could hardly have been so great that the land available in Cisalpine Gaul had already proved insufficient. In all probability, the appearance of the Gauls before Clusium was no more than an incident in one of the raids in search of plunder and ransoms, raids which for more than half a century the Gauls inflicted repeatedly upon the whole of Italy.

However that may be, the people of Clusium offered resistance; but the Etruscan league, either powerless or indifferent to their own interests, deserted them, just as, at the time of the Roman invasion, they had deserted Veii and the other towns of southern Etruria. Clusium, therefore, appealed to Rome, the city which, by the beginning of the fourth century, had become the leading power in central Italy. While refusing all military intervention, Rome sent envoys to negotiate with the enemy and to offer mediation. There is no doubt that in this situation she intended to play her part of mediator in good faith, but the envoys sent upon this delicate task could not have been worse chosen. They abandoned the strict neutrality which was essential to their mission, and fought side by side with the men of Clusium: one of them, even, during an engagement, killed a Gallic chief. The Gauls might have broken off negotiations; instead they contented themselves with demanding reparation, but because of the high position of the culprits it was refused. Accordingly, raising the siege of Clusium, which in view of their lack of skill and of siege-engines would inevitably have turned into a long blockade, they marched on Rome.

The band of raiders lacked organization and proper military science: their strength lay in their love of adventure, their ardour, their instinct for attack. What resistance had they to meet? The military power of Rome, against which they were to be pitted, contained two distinct elements: the fighting qualities of the army, and the defensive possibilities of the city. The army was a citizen militia, organized on the basis of the century, which with all its inherent virtues and defects had reached its final development. On the other hand, the defences of Etruscan Rome, which after the unification of the city had depended on a vast enceinte, the wall of Servius Tullius, had not survived the fall of the monarchy. During the long-drawn crisis of the fifth century, old local separatism had reappeared; the several hills became more and more independent at the expense of the ancient unity. Consequently, the defences of Rome at the beginning of the fourth century were no more than a series of isolated forts, coinciding with the various hills, of which the most solid and the best fortified, the citadel of the Capitol, served as a keep. There was, then, a citizen army, with considerable sources from which to recruit—for the whole population of the city might be mobilized—but unwieldy, difficult to manoeuvre and often badly commanded; and behind this living rampart lay an open city with the Capitoline citadel as its last stronghold. Such, in its two fundamental elements, was the military organization which the Gauls marching on Rome were to meet.

The distance from Clusium to Rome is some eighty miles, or four days’ march: the road follows the valley of the Tiber, the easiest of all routes for an invader. The Gauls with the extreme mobility which always marked their raids swept down it like a torrent. Historical tradition, in which legend figured largely, does at least faithfully reflect the panic caused by the march of the Gauls. Their numbers, their masses of cavalry, their lack of discipline, their primitive equipment, the ferocity of their war-cries—all combined to strike terror into the Romans. Livy makes the consul M. Popillius Laenas say, forty years later: ‘ You are not facing a Latin or a Sabine foe, who will become your ally when you have beaten him: we have drawn our swords against wild beasts, whose blood we must shed or spill our own’— ‘in beluas strinximus ferrum; hauriendus aut dandus est sanguis.’

Anxious to palliate the defeat that followed, Roman historians have endeavoured to throw the blame either on circumstances, such as the lack of time, or on their commanders who had not the wit to make the dispositions which the danger demanded. But there was time to mobilize the allied contingents—according to Plutarch—and with these the Romans had 40,000 men, which made them numerically almost equal to the enemy: and, second, it must be recognized that the defensive line of the Allia on the left bank of the Tiber, covered on the one flank by the river and on the other by the lower spurs of the Crustumian mountains, was strategically as judicious a choice as possible. Actually, the effect of surprise was the supreme weapon in the hands of the Gauls; in the event it played its full part. On 18 July on the battlefield of the Allia, a little tributary on the left of the Tiber above Fidenae, the present Fosso della Bettina, the Roman army broke in confusion. The larger part crossed the Tiber and took refuge in Veii, the remainder fled to Rome. Rome’s first line of defence, the field-army, was broken.

To dispute the invaders’ entry into Rome, an open city, was out of the question. The population abandoned the lower quarters of the town and scattered over the Various hills. The remains of the army with the civic authorities occupied the last stronghold, the citadel on the Capitol. The Gauls arrived before Rome according to Polybius three days later, on the same evening according to the more probable statement of Livy. The next day they entered the city unresisted, plundered and burnt it, if not wholly—here perhaps tradition exaggerates when it says that the destruction was complete, though the use of wood for houses which was customary at this period would have made it easy,—at least in part. With the exception of the Capitol the devastation was general. These are the certain historical facts; the rest is little more than legend.

Modern archaeological discoveries, which have laid bare traces of this devastation at two points in the city, the Forum and the Palatine, fully confirm the historical account. The Palatine, which, like the other hills, at the beginning of the fourth century had only the remnants of fortifications, fell before the attacks of the Gauls, and the excavations of 1907 have revealed clear traces of the fire that destroyed it. That sacred corner of the city where the most ancient relics of the primitive town were piously preserved, the Casa Faustuli, the Auguratorium, the Curia of the Salii, the Fifth Sanctuary of the Argei, was laid waste. From that time onwards no trace was left of the earlier buildings except the layer of ashes and rubbish which have been laid bare in the course of excavation. In the Forum the invaders defaced all the monuments, in particular the pyramid bearing an archaic inscription which was discovered in 1899 beneath the famous Lapis Niger. After the departure of the Gauls the Romans piously kept these venerable relics, and later, to guard them from all future violation, protected them with a covering of black flagstones, which was renewed in the fourth century A.D. this is the paving which modern excavations have revealed.

The Capitol alone, the last stronghold, held out, thanks to its natural situation. Ardent as ever and impatient to end the enterprise, the Gauls sought to force a decision. They attacked by day and by night—once only baffled by the famous intervention of the geese on the Capitol—until, after repeated failures, they resigned themselves to a siege which lasted seven months. At last famine overcame the defenders and, at the end of their resources, they proposed to treat. The Gauls asked for nothing better. Decimated by the lack of provisions and the fevers of summer, and threatened in their own Cisalpine Gaul with an invasion by the Veneti, they accepted the offer, and the Romans ransomed their city and their territory. As soon as the treaty was fulfilled, the invaders departed, though not entirely unhindered, for in the course of their retreat some of their bands were attacked by Roman troops from Caere and above all from Veii, and suffered losses. This account was humiliating to the national pride, and Rome, when she became a great power, read it with shame: it is not surprising therefore that in the annalists it has been replaced by another version. There is no definite denial of the buying-off of the enemy, but it is claimed that Camillus, coming up at the precise moment of the payment, broke the agreement and, sword in hand, cleared Roman territory of the invaders. The few local successes won over the Gauls, at Ardea and elsewhere, made the reversal of tradition, if not probable, at least plausible. The brutal truth, however ungrateful to Roman national pride, is that the Gauls returned home without great loss and with their booty intact.

Besides the material damage which it caused and the heavy blow to Roman prestige, the Gallic invasion produced a final consequence which was still more important and lasting: the thunderbolt of the Allia seems to have been the signal for the downfall of the power of Rome in central Italy. It is a repetition, after a hundred years interval, of the crisis provoked in 509 by the fall of the Etruscan dynasty. Livy’s description of the main features of the crisis must be as true as it is vigorous.

But they had little time to sit still devising the means necessary to restore the State after so grave a disaster. For, on the one side, old enemies, the Volscians, took up arms and sought the final destruction of the Roman name: on the other merchants brought news that all the chiefs of the Etruscan peoples had met together at the Temple of Voltumna and were leagued together for war. Lastly, there was a further cause for fear: for news came of the rebellion of the Latins and the Hernici, who since the battle of Lake Regillus, that is for nearly a hundred years, had never faltered in the fidelity which bound them to Rome. Such were the alarms which sprang up on every side, while it was clear to all that the Roman name was menaced not only with the hate of her enemies, but also with the scorn of her allies. In these circumstances it was resolved to entrust the defence of the State to the auspices to which it owed its rescue, and to appoint dictator M. Furius Camillus.

IV.

 THE RE-BUILDING OF ROMAN POWER

Once the Gauls had withdrawn from the scene, the whole edifice of Roman power in central Italy had to be built up again, and for a task of this magnitude two things were needed: the right men and the right programme. Supported by the patriotism of her citizens and favoured by fortune, Rome, in the halfcentury which followed the Gallic invasion, succeeded both in discovering her leaders and in realizing her programme.

The great figure of the epoch, although by virtue of his previous career he already belonged to the past, was the conqueror of southern Eturia, Camillus. A man of ideas and a man of action, for five and twenty years he personified the national recovery. The highest offices of the state were heaped upon him again and again. Before the Gallic invasion he had already been censor, military tribune three times, and dictator; after the invasion he was again three times military tribune, four times dictator, several times interrex: although these last figures, given by tradition, are not altogether above suspicion. Under his guidance the Roman army underwent a complete transformation; and when the new weapon was forged and tested, he used it to defeat in turn all the enemies of Rome, Gauls and Etruscans, Volscians, Aequi and rebellious Latins alike. His reforms and his victories reestablished the supremacy of Rome and safeguarded her future. When he died, in 365 if we may trust tradition, Livy, in devoting to his honour a magnificent funeral oration, did no more than pay the debt of his nation to the man who saved her. By his side stood three men who are worthy of special mention; T. Quinctius Cincinnatus appears as military tribune in 388 and 384 and dictator in 380, C. Sulpicius Peticus as consul in 364, 361, 355, 353 and 351 and dictator, and C. Marcius Rutilus as consul in 357, 352, 344 and 342 and dictator. Then in the next generation there is another line of great generals, among whom two men, both heroes of the Gallic Wars, may claim an honourable eminence, T. Manlius Torquatus, consul in 347, 344 and 340, and M. Valerius Corvus, consul in 348, 346, 343, and 335.

After the men, the programme of reform. The collapse of 390 had been both military and political; and accordingly the reforms were aimed at the army and the administration. From the military point of view the capture of Rome had taught a double lesson. First, Rome could not without perennial danger remain an unfortified city in the midst of open enemies or doubtful friends. Second, the Roman army of the fifth century, despite the reforms introduced at the time of the siege of Veii, was not capable of holding the field in open fight against their new and terrible enemy, the Gauls. On the morrow of the crisis of 390, the government of Rome took the necessary measures to find the most satisfactory solutions to these two problems, the one of fortification, the other of tactics

One of the strongest points of Rome’s policy was, now as ever, the realization that to obtain a satisfactory solution of her problems she must dispose of them in order of urgency. She treated the problem of fortification like all others. To deal with the most pressing needs, the first step was to restore the defences of the Palatine and protect the sacred hill from further violation. The excavations of 1907 have revealed the fact that fragments of wall, long attributed to the era of the Kings, are in fact no older than the re-building carried out immediately after the Gallic invasion . But the great achievement which gave to republican Rome her armour of defence was the restoration of the rampart of Servius Tullius, a restoration which was completed towards the middle of the fourth century. Here too, during the past few years, archaeological research has provided important and trustworthy evidence. This powerful wall, over seven miles long, which was also one of the results of the Gallic Wars, provided Rome with the final solution of her defensive problem. There remained the forging of a weapon of offence: and this too was soon achieved by the military reforms of Camillus and of the generals trained in his school.

The military organization, condemned by its complete collapse in 390, was the traditional timocratic arrangement of classes. This system had saved the authority of Rome during the crisis of the fifth century: but it no longer met the needs of war on the grand scale, nor matched the altered conditions of the new situation. Rome had saved herself from disaster by buying off her enemies: but she knew well that the Gauls might return and she realized also that her hegemony in central Italy could only be regained by a complete and widespread military re-organization. To find soldiers was easy: the centuriate system, brought to its fullest development before the Gallic invasion, provided sufficient effectives. What was all-important was to improve their efficiency. This involved reform and to achieve this in organization, in armament and in tactics, the Roman government, with the fear of the Gauls ever before its eyes, concentrated all its energies.

Tradition attributes to Camillus a large share in this reform: and even if he was not the sole author—for another of the great leaders of the period, C. Sulpicius Peticus, also played a part— there is little doubt but that his was the main inspiration. The military re-organization entailed two fundamental innovations. First, for the principle of arrangement by census was substituted that of arrangement by age, consequently by individual capacity and experience: the heavy infantry, the real legionary troops, are henceforth disposed in three lines, hastate, principes and triarii, the younger men in advance, the older in reserve; the light infantry, the velites, on the other hand retained its previous system of recruitment strictly based on the census, and men continued to be drawn from the last two classes. Second, for mass-tactics, modelled on the use of the phalanx which, in the opinion of the present writer, was inherited from the Etruscans, was substituted a less rigid formation, manoeuvring by maniples: for only thus was it possible to attain the suppleness and elasticity necessary to make head against the offensive power and the mobility of the Gauls. A further modification of tactics, relative to the discharge of the javelin, was introduced in 358 by the dictator C. Sulpicius. Finally, the armament of the troops underwent corresponding reforms suggested by the struggle against the Gauls: thus, a helmet of iron was substituted for the leathern casque, the shield was strengthened with strips of bronze, and the pilum was modified by the addition of a shaft of soft metal. The Roman army emerged from this programme of reform restored and rejuvenated. The weapon of revenge was ready: in half a century of savage struggles the Gauls and the other adversaries of Rome in turn were to prove its value to their cost on the battle-fields of central Italy.

The programme of reform, which in the minds of all the statesmen of Rome was to culminate in the national restoration, was finally completed by a double series of political measures. In the first place, to guard against all subsequent defection, reconquest was quickly followed by the resumption of the system of colonies. New Latin colonies were founded, two in the south, in Volscian territory, Satricum in 385 and Setia in 382, and two in the north in Etruria, Sutrium and Nepete in 383. The second measure was an innovation of capital and decisive importance for the future of the state. The conception of enlarging the victorious city by the granting of civic rights to the vanquished, under the new form of municipium, was at once original and fruitful. It was first applied to Tusculum in 381; with the dissolution of the Latin League in 338 the system became general .

On the morrow of her disaster, Rome did not flinch before the double programme of military and administrative reform necessary for her recovery. Nor did she fail to discover the men capable of leading her armies to victory. And yet despite prodigies of energy, it was fully forty years before she regained the authority which she had enjoyed. There is nothing surprising in this fact if account be taken of the dangers, external and internal, which during this period she found herself called upon to face. The Gallic invasion had destroyed the prestige of Rome and for forty years the Gauls returned again and again to trouble her borders. Latins, Etruscans, Aequi, Volscians, finally Hernici made war upon her until, as a century before, not only the greatness but the very existence of the state was imperilled. At home the struggle between the two orders, risen to fever-heat, delayed and more than once paralysed the progress of national recovery. It was not until 367, if we may accept the tradition, that the passing of the Licinian laws mitigated, if it did not end, the bitterness of the conflict. Under these conditions, if there be any cause for wonder, it is that after such total ruin, in the midst of so many and such grave dangers, complete restoration was finally achieved. The miracle of Rome in the first half of the fourth century was only possible because of the determination of her government, the energy of her leaders and the patriotism of her citizens. Once more, and not for the last time, the spirit of Rome was a revelation to others and to herself.

V.

 GALLIC INCURSIONS

The wars which follow over more than half a century, with the struggle against the Gauls as their centre, are extremely incoherent for several reasons. The armies of Rome are fighting on several fronts: events are confused with each other, and to this tangle the unreliability of historical tradition adds the final complication. According to Polybius, during the thirty years which followed the capture of Rome, that is to say, according to the chronology which he uses, from 387 to 357, the Gauls remained at peace with Rome. This interval gave Rome a breathing-space in which to re-organize her forces and settle the question of Latium. The invaders reappeared in 357 and advanced as far as Alba: the Romans, caught unawares, and with no time to mobilize the allied contingents, did not dare to march against them. Twelve years later, that is in 346 or 345, the Gauls returned to the attack: but this time the Romans were forewarned: reinforced by their allies they marched against them and offered battle. The Gauls, at variance among themselves, fled in panic by night and regained their country in disorder. Finally after another interval of thirteen years, with the growth of Roman power before their eyes, they signed a truce which was to last thirty years, until the end of the fourth century.

Livy certainly multiplies the invasions by the Gauls beyond reason, though he gives a very circumstantial account of them as well as of the subsidiary wars. According to him, Satricum was four times captured and Velitrae was repeatedly besieged. The duel of T. Manlius Torquatus with the Gaul is duplicated, in 367 and 361. The annalistic tradition both multiplies the number and increases the importance of the Roman victories. The last element of confusion is the difference between the Greek and Roman chronologies. In this quicksand of doubt, where truth in detail is beyond our reach, the task of the historian is to disengage the basic facts and shed light on the general trend of events.

The Gallic invasion of 390 had two main consequences, the one direct—the inauguration of a long series of Gallic wars— the other indirect—the rebellion of the allies or subjects of Rome and a recrudescence of activity among her traditional enemies. Consequently the history of the recovery of Roman prestige during the first half of the fourth century BC contains two parallel chapters: on the one side is the story of the Gallic Wars, on the other, the subjection of the revolted nations. For the sake of clearness it is advisable to present them as two successive and distinct pictures.

Although the taking of Rome by the Gauls has always been particularly famous in history, it was in reality no more than a local episode in the course of the Celtic invasions of the Italian peninsula. Episodes of this kind, towns held to ransom, were beyond all doubt, common. Herein lies the explanation of the fact that the departure of the Gauls after the capture of Rome was followed, after an interval, by a series of renewed invasions. Tradition, in so far as it concerns the general history of Italy in the fourth century, is certainly weak and unreliable: but there are nevertheless certain scattered indications which throw light generally on the character and sequence of these often repeated attempts. In northern Italy the Gallic invasion had assumed the form of immigration in mass and stationary settlement; but in peninsular Italy we have no more than transitory raids leading to no lasting settlement.

These irruptions assume two different and at the same time complementary forms. First there are the more or less substantial bands, similar in fact to that which raided Rome in 390: such bands, under commanders of their own nationality, are merely inspired by a lust for plunder. Avoiding the fastness of the Apennines, which was sufficiently defended by nature, these plundering expeditions moved down the two corridors of the western and eastern coasts. By these, the natural routes of penetration into southern Italy, they march on the one side through Etruria, Latium and Campania, where some elements may have found a temporary settlement, and on the other through Apulia. One band of plunderers, returning from such a raid, was attacked by the inhabitants of Caere allied to Rome and completely routed. The second form taken by the Gallic invasions of the Italian peninsula was the appearance of Gauls in the guise of mercenaries. This phenomenon was not peculiar to Italy, but is to be detected throughout the Mediterranean world from the fourth to the end of the second century. Dionysius the Elder, the tyrant of Syracuse who dreamed of supremacy in southern Italy and on the Adriatic coasts, used the Gauls for the development of his policy and the realization of his far-reaching designs. In 368—7 BC he sent them to the help of Sparta and his son, Dionysius the Younger, made use of them in his conflicts with the Veneti. In central Italy, the peoples who had revolted from Rome, notably the Latin cities of Velitrae, Tibur and Praeneste, hired troops of Gauls as mercenaries, thus offering them opportunities of establishing in the very heart of Italy centres of political intrigue and military points d’appui from which their raids received fresh impulse. It is in this double character of raiding bands and of mercenaries in the service of her enemies that Rome had to face the Gauls and withstand their renewed attacks during the second third of the fourth century BC.

During a long period, according to Polybius’ account thirty years, according to Livy twenty-three, history makes no mention of any conflict between Rome and the Gauls. The reason for this unhoped-for respite lay in the difficulties experienced by the Gauls; according to Polybius there were dissensions among themselves and struggles with the Alpine peoples: according to Strabo they were at war with the Etruscans and the Umbrians. If we may trust Livy’s account, which, on this point as on so many others, must be accepted only with the most distinct reserve, the Gauls suddenly reappeared in 367 and pitched their camp in the neighbourhood of the city, on the banks of the Anio. For the fifth time Camillus was raised to the dictatorship. One account assigns to this occasion the curious duel in which T. Manlius Torquatus killed a Gaul of enormous stature and spoiled him of his collar in view of the two armies. Livy prefers to put this particular episode six years later, but he mentions a battle fought in the neighbourhood of Alba in which the victorious Romans slew several thousands of the barbarians and captured their camp. Those that escaped for the most part made their way back to Apulia. In 366 there was a rumour that the Gauls in Apulia had rallied: for a moment there was a fear that the invasion of Roman soil might be repeated: but nothing came of it and the Gauls remained quiet for five years. In 361, a Gallic army marched on Rome and pitched its camp three miles from the town on the Via Salaria beyond the bridge of the Anio. The Romans under the leadership of the dictator, T. Quinctius Poenus, occupied the left bank of the river, covering Rome. The two armies strove for the possession of the bridge: and this is the occasion to which Livy attributes the episode of the duel between T. Manlius Torquatus and the Gaul. It did not come to a battle: the victory of the Roman caused the retreat of the Gauls who regained the territory of Tibur, their ally, and passed on into Campania.

The next year, in 360, they returned, this time too, according to Livy, at the invitation of the inhabitants of Tibur, and they laid waste the territory of the Latin allies who had remained faithful to Rome, Tusculum, Alba and Labici. Taking into account the different chronologies of Polybius and Livy, this seems to be identical with Polybius’ invasion of 357, the first, according to him, since the capture of Rome. On this occasion the Gauls advanced as far as Alba, unopposed by the Romans, who did not dare to venture out against them. Livy’s account of the events that followed is different from that of Polybius. In face of the danger Q. Servilius Ahala was made dictator (Rome’s great leader, Camillus, having been dead some years); near the Colline Gate he crushed the invaders who, as before, retreated on Tibur. The Consul C. Poetelius Libo pursued them, and, despite the intervention of the Tiburtines, who sallied out to their assistance, drove them back into the town. In 358 there was a fresh invasion: the Gauls penetrated into Latium as far as the outskirts of Pedum. The dictator C. Sulpicius Peticus, one of the best military commanders of the period, refused an engagement and temporized in the hope of exhausting the enemy. But the Roman army demanded to be led out to battle, and Sulpicius gave way. The Gauls suffered a crushing defeat.

This victory of 358 won for Rome only a respite, and eight years later Latium was once more invaded by the Gauls. The Roman army, under the consul M. Popillius Laenas, marched to meet them. The Gauls attacked the Romans while they were fortifying their camp, but suffered a repulse and took refuge on the Alban Mount. The next year, in 349, the Gauls were driven out by the rigours of winter, and descended to ravage the plain. The Roman army gave battle but the issue was doubtful, and the invaders retired to their camp. Left sole consul by the death of his colleague, Camillus’ son, L. Furius Camillus, entrenched himself in the Pomptine marshes and waited till weariness overtook his adversaries. Finally, a battle was fought during which, according to tradition, took place the episode of M. Valerius Corvus and the famous intervention of the raven. Again the defeated Gauls took their flight through the territory of the Volsci and the remnants of their army regained Apulia. Polybius mentions no battle during this period but merely a stampede of Gauls who in face of the Roman troops were panic-stricken and fled back into their own country. The fact remains that whether they were defeated or only fled, they did not reappear for some time. Towards 332-331, a treaty was concluded between Rome and the Senones which, for a time at least, ended the long struggle.

VI.

THE WARS OF ROME WITH HER NEIGHBOURS

The repression of the revolts fomented in central Italy by Gallic intervention falls into four main series of events: in the north the restoration of Roman authority in southern Etruria: in the east the defeat of the Aequi and Hernici, to the south the crushing of the Volsci and the conquest of part of their territory, and finally, the achievement that produced the most important result of all, the renewal, in i still stronger form, of Roman preponderance in Latium.

In southern Etruria the effect of the Gallic invasion had been, if not the total loss of the territory won at the beginning of the century, at any rate a series of separatist movements, such as the insurrection of Fidenae. Here Rome promptly re-established her authority. There are several reasons which explain the ease with which this task was performed: the movement of secession had not been general, the fall of Veii made the task considerably simpler, and finally, Sutrium and Nepete, the two great border citadels, stood firmly by Rome. Fidenae was recaptured and sacked, and Rome victoriously restored her northern frontier. But, on this occasion, taught by experience, Etruria did not allow the work to be accomplished without offering a vigorous resistance. In 389, according to the account of the annalists, a strong army of Etruscans laid siege to Sutrium. The town appealed to Rome, but help arrived too late, and it was forced to surrender. Camillus lost no time in recapturing it: the Etruscans were cut to pieces and either surrendered or fled. In 388 Rome entered on war with Tarquinii, one of the great cities of independent Etruria, and two Etruscan strongholds, Cortuosa and Contenebra, were captured. The next year, southern Etruria was partially annexed to Rome, and four new tribes were made, the tribus Stellatina in the territory of Capena, Tromentina in the territory of Veii, Sabatina in the region of Lake Bracciano, and Arnensis in the country between Rome and Caere, north-east of the mouth of the Tiber. From this moment the conditions previous to the Gallic invasion were completely and definitely restored on the northern frontier.

But this settlement, which confirmed the permanent character of the Roman occupation, soon alarmed the great towns of central Etruria, henceforward neighbours of Rome and anxious for the maintenance of their independence. Several among them, in particular Tarquinii, again took up arms. In 386 the Etruscans once more threatened Nepete and Sutrium. They captured the first, thanks to the complicity of the anti-Roman party, and they were on the point of seizing the second, when the relieving army arrived under the orders of Camillus and his colleague, P. Valerius, commanding in the capacity of military tribunes. The two towns were recaptured and the Etruscans retired into their own country. The inhabitants of Nepete who had proved unfaithful to the Roman cause fell under the lictors’ axes. Finally, as we have seen, the establishment of two Latin colonies at Sutrium and Nepete secured the frontier and consolidated what had been achieved.

But, despite these brilliant successes, the era of armed resistance on the part of the Etruscans was not at an end. In 359, the inhabitants of Tarquinii invaded Roman territory and laid it waste. In the following year they defeated the consul, C. Fabius Ambustus, and massacred 300 Roman soldiers whom they had taken prisoners. In 357, Tarquinii made an alliance with Falerii, and in 356 the whole Etruscan federation came in to support them. The dictator C. Marcius Rutilus beat the Etruscans and drove them back into their own country. In the following year, Sulpicius Peticus, for the third time consul, took the offensive, invading and ravaging the territory of Tarquinii. Hostilities continued and the war was waged without pity, and neither side shrank from the massacre of prisoners. In 353, Caere itself, Rome’s old ally, threatened in its turn, made an alliance with Tarquinii; it was defeated and sued for peace which Rome granted in the form of a hundred years’ truce.

Finally, in 351, Rome resolved to end these ceaselessly recurring campaigns once and for all. She launched a double offensive against Tarquinii and Falerii and this time her success was complete. Following the example of Caere, Tarquinii and Falerii sued for peace and were accorded a forty years truce. ‘Thus,’ concludes Livy, ‘Rome found herself relieved of the burden of two threatening wars.’

On her eastern frontier, Rome had to deal with two mountain peoples, the Aequi and Hernici. One after the other she attacked them and gained the victory. In 389, Camillus crushed the Aequi at Bola, and took the town by assault: in the following year, the Roman army marched victoriously through the country. The attack upon the Hernici, at first postponed by reason of the Etruscan War, was launched in 386. Allied to the Latins and to the Volsci, the Hernici were beaten on two occasions, in 386 by Camillus, in 385 by the dictator A. Cornelius Cossus. For twenty-three years they remained peaceably in their mountains, whither Rome, beset with numerous difficulties, was careful not to pursue them. Finally in 362, Rome resolved to finish with them and declared war. The operations began badly, the consul, L. Genucius, was surprised in an ambush and killed, but the dictator Appius Claudius lost no time in avenging this set-back by a great victory. In 361, the two consuls, C. Sulpicius Peticus and C. Licinius Stolo, captured Ferentinum, one of their principal towns. In 360, the consul, M. Fabius Ambustus, defeated them afresh, and finally two years later, after the victory of the consul C. Plautius Proculus, the Hernici asked for peace. They were re-admitted to alliance with Rome, doubtless, like the Latins themselves, on less favourable terms than in the past.

Still more bitter and prolonged were the wars against the Volsci, the most obstinate and implacable foes with which Rome had to deal in the first centuries of her history. The anti-Roman reaction was headed by Antium and Satricum, assisted by the Latin colony of Velitrae. To remove the menace it was not sufficient to defeat them: Rome could never be free of them except at the price of a veritable war of extermination. In 389, the Volsci took the offensive and advanced as far as the territory of Lanuvium, in the heart of Latium; Camillus defeated them at Markion, according to the text of Diodorus (Livy gives ad Maecium near Lanuvium): he forced the breast-work of felled trees behind which they were entrenched and ravaged their country. In 386, in coalition with the Hernici and Latins, they were again beaten by Camillus, now military tribune, at Satricum: the town was taken by assault and the Volsci surrendered. Camillus was already intent upon laying siege to their capital Antium, when he was called away by the war in Etruria, and the project was postponed until a more favourable time. In 385, supported by contingents of Latins and Hernici, and also by the Latin colonists of Velitrae, the Volsci made a supreme effort, only to suffer a crushing defeat at the hands of the dictator A. Cornelius Cossus. A colony of 2000 Roman citizens was planted at Satricum with the task of keeping in check the vanquished enemy. In 383, it was resolved to parcel out the lands of the Pomptine marshes, but pestilence interrupted the undertaking and prevented its execution. In 382, in alliance with Praeneste, the Volsci captured the colony of Satricum by assault. But their success was shortlived. In the next year Camillus, military tribune for the sixth time, overwhelmed them after a hard-fought battle. In 379 they renewed the campaign and attacked the Roman army which was commanded for the moment by two incompetent military tribunes, P. and C. Manlius. They captured the Roman camp, and it was only the tenacity of the Roman soldier that prevented this set-back from turning into disaster.

In 378 Rome planned a converging attack upon the Volsci; two armies invaded their country, the one under the military tribunes, Sp. Furius and M. Horatius, to the west, by the coast, the other, under Q. Servilius and L. Geganius, to the east, by the mountains. The country was methodically pillaged and laid waste: the trees were cut down, harvests burnt, cattle driven off. In 377, the indefatigable Volsci appeared again under the walls of Satricum: a Roman army under P. Valerius and L. Aemilius crushed them, plundered their camp and drove them back on Antium. The lack of the necessary equipment prevented the Romans from undertaking the siege of the town, but, a quarrel arising between the Volsci and the Latins, the Antiates were driven to surrender. In 358, by an operation analogous and parallel to that which she had carried out twenty-nine years earlier in southern Etruria, Rome annexed the Pomptine plains, and formed there two new tribes, the Pomptina and the Poplilia. Decimated and exhausted, the Volsci were forced to stand by and watch this menacing expansion of Roman power. But their passion for independence and their hope of revenge were not yet quenched. In 348 the war re-opened, a war to the death which found its consummation in 338 with the downfall of the Antiates and the final submission of the Volscian people.

Finally, the Romans had to face the task of re-establishing their hegemony in Latium. The Gallic invasion had had as its last and most serious consequence the ruin of what Rome had achieved by generations of effort in the heart of Latium. The ancient pact of alliance was broken: separatist tendencies had arisen, and even though there had not been a unanimous rising in arms against Rome, such as that which followed the expulsion of the kings, yet Tibur and Praeneste, the two most powerful cities in that region, proud of their ancient glory, had endeavoured to form separate confederations for their own advantage. The Latin colony of Velitrae supported the movement, and the rebels could count besides on the co-operation of Rome’s enemies, traditional enemies like the Aequi and Volsci or new enemies like the Gauls. Fortunately for Rome, the movement of secession was not general. Tusculum, apart from an equivocal attitude in 381, which however was only momentary, together with the body of southern Latin towns, Ardea, Aricia, Lanuvium, Lavinium, Cora, Norba, Setia and Signia, remained faithful to the cause of Rome, and thus provided her armies in Latium with the bases of operation, political and military, which were indispensable to her arms and to her statecraft.

The stubborn war which continued for thirty-five years between Rome and the Latin towns falls into two successive phases. At first the Latins, who were later to be supported by the mountain peoples to the east and by the Volsci, carried on the struggle alone against the state of Rome. In 386, and in the next year reinforced by the Volsci and the Hernici, they were defeated by Camillus and the dictator A. Cornelius Cossus. In 382, the Praenestines, in conjunction with the Volsci, captured the colony of Satricum. In 377 the allied armies of the revolted Latins and Volsci were overwhelmed near Satricum' by the consular tribunes P. Valerius and L. Aemilius. The defeat was followed by a quarrel between the vanquished; the Antiates surrendered, while the Latins retreated homewards.

The second period opened with the Latins conscious of their impotence and with little hope of victory. The seceding cities, among which the Roman tradition expressly mentions Velitrae, Tibur and Praeneste, called in the Gauls and made use of them as mercenaries against Rome. In 360, the Gauls, defeated by the dictator, Q. Servilius Ahala, near the Colline Gate, sought refuge at Tibur, whose inhabitants sallied out to their aid. The defeats of the Gauls and even more, perhaps, the behaviour of the Gallic auxiliaries, which gave as much trouble to their allies as to their enemies, finally sealed the fate of Latium. Nevertheless for some years the Latins resisted bitterly. In 358, defeated and discouraged, Latium was driven to accept the renewal of the old treaty of Spurius Cassius, with a certain number of new provisions imposed by Rome after her victory, provisions which henceforth secured the political and military leadership of the federation to Rome. In the same year the annexation of the Pomptine plains definitely shut off Praeneste from all access to the sea. By 354 the separatist cities had surrendered one by one: Tibur resumed its position in the federal league, Nomentum, Pedum, even Praeneste herself, were forced by the inexorable pressure of Roman arms to enter the league. This is the final collapse. After half a century of severe trials, Rome was definitely victorious in Latium as elsewhere.

The Gallic Wars of the first half of the fourth century BC mark only the beginnings of a struggle which continued in years to come. In the great war of Italian independence Rome was to find herself again faced by the Gauls, where at Sentinum, the decisive battle which sealed the fate of Italy, Celtic contingents were to play their part. They appeared yet once more on the eve of the Second Punic War, on the battlefield of Telamon and, a few years later, in Hannibal’s ranks. The implacable duel between the two nations, Latin and Celtic, did not end until the conquest of the Gauls by Caesar. But this first act of the struggle, lasting over half a century, had a fundamental effect on the destinies of Rome and the development of her power.

It is true to say that all the great events which mark the history of Rome during this period, whether victories or defeats, appear as the direct or indirect results of the Gallic invasions of Italy. It was the invasion of the Gauls which, by splitting the Etruscan forces and distracting their attention to the north, made it possible for Rome in the early years of the fourth century to conquer Veii and southern Etruria. It was the invasion of the Gauls which brought about the collapse of Rome in 390, with the important effects which that catastrophe had upon her existence as a great power. Finally it was the invasion of the Gauls which during the period of recovery was always, whether in the background or the foreground, the dominant preoccupation and the ultimate concern of the Roman government. But above all, and this is the consequence that should most be remembered, the Gallic invasions are a decisive factor in the marvellous development of the Roman State at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the third centuries BC, a factor operating in two directions—material and moral. On the material side, the disaster of 390, brought about by the invasions, gave rise to the great military and political reforms from which Rome, tested and proved, emerged better armed and more powerful. On the moral side, the duration of these invasions, the ravages which the Gauls caused over almost the whole of Italy, inflicting as much injury on their allies as on their adversaries, the impression of terror which they spread everywhere in their course, all contributed, in a form already real though still vague, to the efflorescence of the sentiment of Italian unity. In the very midst of the numerous and heterogeneous races who shared the soil of the peninsula, the invaders prepared the way for acquiescence in unification under Rome. On both these grounds, the general principle which underlies all the greatness of Rome—the principle of Italian unity—should in its elementary form, the unity of central Italy, be directly ascribed to the influence of the Gallic Wars.

The unification of the Italian peninsula was the work of the period that follows: but by the middle of the fourth century important progress had already been made. With her domain of over 2500 square miles, including her own territory and that of her allies, Rome had become the most powerful state in central Italy. She had more than regained, this time never to lose it again, the territorial and political position which she held at the beginning of the fourth century. To the north, southern Etruria had been reconquered, organized and partially annexed, in the form of tribes, to the Roman state. In the east and south, the Aequi and the Volsci had been crushed and reduced to insignificance. The Latin-Roman federation, destroyed after 390 by the action of the allies, had arisen again from its ashes; but Rome no longer took part in it on terms of strict equality. Thanks to her victories she exercised a preponderance which she had never known in the past. Finally, the annexation of the Pomptine plains prepared the way for the encircling of Latium, which, some years later, was to end in the permanent annexation of Campania.

For Rome, the atmosphere was clearing: wider horizons, a wider perspective for the future were opening out before her eyes. In 354, she concluded her first treaty with the Samnites, and six years later, in 348, she signed a treaty with Carthage, two diplomatic acts of capital importance, the first opening the era of her great Italian policy, the second that of her great Mediterranean policy. After the severe struggles of the Gallic Wars, Rome, from the middle of the fourth century onwards, began to harvest the fruits of her exertions.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE CONQUEST OF CENTRAL ITALY