Chapter XV: Part 15

After Rome had already for eight years worn herself out against Veii, and the most perfect tranquility reigned with the Æquians and Volscians, a _prodigium_ came to pass. The waters of the Alban lake, which otherwise stood always below the brink of the old crater, now began to swell, and threatened to overflow. This is the general tenor of the old tradition: with regard to the details the accounts differ. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Dio Cassius in Zonaras, the stream ran straight from the lake into the sea; according to others, it merely threatened to overflow its banks. The Romans did not know what to do. They had stationed outposts before Veii, but when there was no actual fighting, a sort of armistice was kept. On this, an Etruscan haruspex laughed at the Romans for giving themselves so much trouble to conquer Veii, saying, that, so long as they were not masters of the Alban lake, they would not be able to take the town. A Roman, bearing this in mind, sent for the haruspex under the pretext of a _procuratio rei domesticæ_, who was then seized by the enemy, and compelled to tell them, what was to be done. He answered that they ought to drain the waters of the Alban lake, so that a stream from thence might reach the sea by a neighbouring river. The same thing was told by the Delphian god. The Romans now undertook the work and executed it. When it was all but finished, the Veientines sent an embassy to Rome, adjuring the Romans to receive them _in deditionem_. But the Romans would not listen to any such prayer; for they knew that the spell was broken. The Veientines said that this was true; yet that it was also stated in their books, that, if Veii were destroyed, Rome would likewise soon be taken by barbarians, and this the haruspex had forborne to tell them. The Romans now ran this risk, and appointed Camillus as dictator, who called upon all the people to share the booty, and undertook the assault. The sacred matters having been attended to, human wisdom was in requisition. He ran a gallery under the Arx of Veii, and led from thence a passage to the temple of Juno; as the fates had decreed, that he who made the offering in the Arx of Veii should be victorious. The Romans rushed in by that passage, slew the Etruscan king, and made the offering. Then the wall was scaled on all sides.

If we now reflect upon the historical absurdity of this account, we cannot doubt for one moment, the existence of a poetical fiction. There are traces of the citadel of Veii to this very day. It is situated on the Aqua rossa, is almost wholly surrounded by water, and rises to a considerable height: it is a rock of tufa. The Romans must then have had to dig a passage under the bed of the river, and to make the gallery with such consummate art, that no one could observe any thing; so that when all was done, they would only have quietly to raise the last stone in the temple and to climb out, as from a trap door.

In all probability, this is what really happened. There were two sorts of sieges. One was that described above, which only consisted in heaping up rubbish against the wall. Or else, with huge toil they undermined its foundations, and shoring it up with a framework of strong beams, set fire to the timber, and burned it, so that the masonry might come down with a crash. A positive mention of battering rams does not occur before the Peloponnesian war; and among the Romans even somewhat later. If Veii was really taken by means of a _cuniculus_, it is to be explained by the second mode.

The draining of the Alban lake must surely belong to this period. We cannot gainsay it, nor is there any reason for putting in here a work of earlier date. It is likely that owing to some stoppage in the channels by which it was drained, there was danger of the lake’s overflowing the whole of Latium; and possibly they may have taken advantage of the credulity of the people to stir them to this immense undertaking, though I believe that, if the senate decided upon this necessary work, it readily found obedience. It is to be supposed that the Alban lake had a subterraneous outlet through clefts, like the Fucinus and all lakes which have been formed in the craters of volcanoes: these chasms may have been filled up by an earthquake. Livy, somewhat further on, speaks of a severe winter when the Tiber was covered with ice, and of a sickly summer which followed it. The newly discovered _excerpta_ of Dionysius place the construction of the tunnel in the year after that severe winter. Livy says that during that winter the snow lay seven feet deep, and that the trees were killed by the frost; a statement quite in the style of the annals, which, although the old annals were lost at the Gallic invasion, is yet very credible, as that winter must have survived in the memory of all. Just as severe was the winter of 483, when the snow lay for forty days on the Forum. The earlier Roman history shows traces of the average height of the thermometer having been at that time much less than it is now.[115] In Roman and Greek history, the periods of extraordinary appearances in the weather are almost always the precursors of frightful earthquakes: thus an eruption of Ætna happens at this time (354). Vesuvius was then quiet; yet the earthquakes were awful. By one of these, the outlets of the Alban lake may have been stopped: generally speaking, all lakes which have no _emissarius_, exhibit wonderful periods of rise and fall. The lake Copais even had artificial drains, which, however, were afterwards choked up, and Bœotia during the Macedonian era was not able to pay the cost of clearing them; the consequence of this was, that the lake began to swell, and overflowed the country all about. On the whole, as Aristotle has already remarked, Greece may have lost in the supply of water. The lake Copais is at present merely a marsh, which one cannot indeed any more call a lake, with stagnant pools, as in our “turf-moors.”

The work which the Romans executed is wonderful. The tunnel is entire to this day, and is in length 2,700 paces, half a German league:[116] the water of the lake is diminished to an appropriate level. This alone is a considerable advantage, although the country about is now uncultivated, and has nothing but brushwood growing upon it. More important, however, is the fact that drinkable water was gained by it; as the campagna of Rome was much in want of water, and although that of the lake is by no means good, yet it is better than what is found in the wells thereabouts. The work is equal to the greatest Etruscan ones: the entrance from the lake is a vault, executed in the grandest style like the hall of a temple, and we see that Rome now built again on as vast a scale as under the kings. This is characteristic of the time of Camillus. The tunnel is most of it cut through a hard mass of lava, a small portion only through _peperino_, which is more easily worked; it is a gallery nine palms high, and five palms broad. By this means the lake is kept, probably for ever, to a fixed level: moreover, the _emissarius_ never needs to be repaired. The lake was at that time about a hundred feet above the level to which it was let off. How such a work was accomplished, is a very interesting question. If we consider the imperfect state of the instruments of those days when the use of the compass was not yet known, the task of finding the correct level at a distance of half a mile is indeed immense; nay it would even now be fraught with considerable difficulty, as one must know to a line, how high one ought to build in order to have a gradually inclined way for the water. It is known in the country, and stated in some books, that from the lake to the lower point to which the water was to be led, open shafts are everywhere seen to this day by which people even now go down to clean the _emissarius_: these did not serve merely to carry off the mud,--the lake is not muddy,--but also to calculate the depth, and to allow the air to come in. By the salt-water of the shafts, they were able accurately to calculate the line to its extremity. Now-a-days people are so little practised in levelling, that to a very recent period it was not known that the lake of Nemi lies higher than that of Alba. By sinking shafts, it was also possible for a greater number of people to work, and to bring the whole to a speedy completion: from each of them two parties might proceed till they mutually met. In this manner the tunnel was finished to the edge of the lake. The entrance was no doubt effected by a stone bore of the size of the tube of a tobacco pipe; for a wall of basalt needs not to be thicker than two ells for it sufficiently to withstand the whole pressure of the lake. An opening was made by which the lake sank gradually, so that the workmen had still time to be raised by a windlass from the shafts; when the water had discharged itself, the wall was pulled down, and the break was built to keep off trees, &c.; then it was embellished, and the magnificent portico and the entrance, similar to that of a temple, were erected. This shames all the Egyptian works, which are strange and useless; this, on the contrary, is purely rational.

That Veii was taken by storm, is certain. The nation was annihilated, and the sack was carried on quite methodically. It is said that the whole population of Rome was summoned thither to assist in the plundering. This may have applied to all those who were bound to military service; partly owing to the short distance of Rome from Veii, and partly because in that long war all had actually served. The fate of the inhabitants of the conquered town is the same which befell so many of the nations of antiquity: those who did not fall by the sword, were led away into bondage. The Romans took possession of an empty town: it was, as we may well believe, finer than their own. Rome has a magnificent situation; yet its picturesque character is fraught with many disadvantages. The country about the city is liable to frequent inundations; the communication within its walls, owing to the many hills and valleys, was very inconvenient for carriages: Veii, on the contrary, with the exception of its Arx, lay on a plain, and in all likelihood had fine broad streets. It was therefore no wonder that the Romans were loath to destroy such a beautiful town. Immediately after its conquest, quarrels arose between the government and the _Plebes_; for the latter demanded the division of the fields, and the former claimed the whole for itself. But this was now no longer possible. Another difficulty arose from the beauty of the town: it was thought a pity that it should be left desolate. It is conceivable, that when the proposal was made to divide the territory, it was also wished that to those who were in want of dwellings, the houses of Veii might be assigned. A tribune of the people proposed, that if the patricians deemed the plebeians too vile, to have their abode in the same place with them, the _Plebes_ with its magistrates might emigrate to Veii:--that the proposal was, as Livy has it, that half of the senate and people should settle at Veii, would be too absurd for belief. Yet even the former one is very questionable: the plan would have been most injudicious. The reasons which Livy adduces against any such splitting of the population, are very weighty: a complete separation would have been inevitable. And if the project was only to transplant a numerous colony with a local government to Veii, even this was likewise very dangerous. A compromise took place. Whilst the patricians received a great part of the occupied land, the _Plebes_ also got a share; and indeed not only were the seven _jugera forensia_ assigned to each as his own lot, but the children were also taken into consideration. According to Diodorus’ statement, every family gets twenty-eight jugera; but in that case the size of the Veientine territory must have been enormous. This assignation did not extend to the _ærarii_. Those among them who were clients of patricians, got places on the estates of their patrons.

The sequel shows that at that time in the territory of Veii and Capena, as well as that of most of the Etruscan cities, there were great rural districts with subjected towns which during the war threw themselves into the arms of the Romans: these were no doubt the old inhabitants, who looked upon them as their liberators.

The conquest of Veii was one of the leading events in history: it freed Rome from the counterpoise which checked its progress. Now that the east was entirely pacified, the Romans advanced with irresistible might into Etruria; as the Etruscans had to concentrate the whole of their force in the Apennines, in order to keep off the Gauls. The war was, however, waged against the Faliscans also. These, to judge from their name, were Volscians, and therefore Virgil calls them _Æqui Falisci_; according to Strabo, they had ἰδίαν γλῶσσαν, and were ἕτερον ἔθνος from the Etruscans. The war of Camillus against the Faliscans is known to us from our earliest childhood, and how he moved them so strongly by his magnanimity, that they embraced the friendly alliance of the Romans. In this there is much which is improbable in itself. The story of the schoolmaster, I will not discuss. Moreover, there was war against the Vulsinians also: the Romans made conquests in their territory, and concluded an advantageous peace. By that time, Rome had already advanced beyond the boundary of the _silva Ciminia_, which afterwards, in the great war of Fabius, appears to have been fraught with such dreadful horrors. The line of demarcation then, does not yet seem to have been very distinct: afterwards, the district may have been purposely allowed to run wild, in order to form a boundary, just as there is also a forest between Austrian and Turkish Dalmatia. Of Capena there is no more mention; it disappears entirely. It was, therefore, either destroyed by the Romans after the conquest of Veii, or by the Gauls: certain it is, that after the invasion of the Gauls, all the Capenates who were left became citizens.

After these victories, Camillus stood forth as the greatest general of his age. But at this period it happened, that he was accused of having appropriated to himself out of the spoils of Veii many articles of great value, particularly the brazen doors of the temple of Juno; and of having announced too late, that he had made a vow to offer the tenth part of the booty to the Pythian Apollo. It would be a vain disquisition to speculate here upon the guilt or innocence of Camillus; only we must not forget, that every Roman general was justified in selecting a portion of the booty for himself.[117] Whether Camillus in this case took more than his share, we cannot decide; where one man goes by a smaller scale, another employs a greater one. We must not believe that Camillus did this in secret: he certainly had the gates put on his own house; if he had intended to use them as metal, they would long since have been melted down. The reason of the hatred against Camillus was a political one. He stood at the head of the most obstinate patrician party, even to the time of his death. The plebeians were becoming more and more energetic and powerful; owing to the tranquillity of prosperity, a certain taste for agitation had sprung up. Camillus was impeached, because he had an influential party against him; and he was fined the sum of fifteen thousand, according to others, one hundred thousand, or even five hundred thousand asses. He then went into exile, to Ardea. Livy says that, previous to his trial, he had entreated his clients and fellow-tribesmen to make every exertion to have him acquitted; which would prove, that he was proceeded against before the centuries, as in this instance there cannot be any question of the tribes;--that they had, however, declared, that they would pay his fine, but not acquit him. This clearly proves his guilt. According to Dionysius, his clansmen and clients really paid it, and he withdrew from sheer disgust. I believe that the curies condemned him, as, when he was recalled, they had again to be summoned to the Capitol, to repeal the decree of banishment; for, it was only in Rome that the curies could assemble. This would likewise prove that he was found guilty, a thing not at all unusual in those times with regard to great men.

MIGRATION OF THE GAULS. CONQUEST OF ROME.

No one had any foreboding of what was now impending upon Rome. She had become great, because the country which she had conquered had been weakened by its oligarchical constitution; the subjects also of the other states willingly went over to her, as they would thus be so much better off, and moreover, in all likelihood, they were sprung from the same stock. But even as Basil subjected the Armenians when they were threatened by the Turks, and soon afterwards the whole of the Greek empire was assailed by the latter, who took much more from it than it had gained before; thus it was also with the Romans.

The inroad of the Gauls into Italy is to be looked upon as a migration, not as a conquest. For what is historical in it, we must depend upon Polybius and Diodorus, who place it shortly before the taking of Rome by the Gauls. To Livy’s statement, that driven from their own country by a famine, they had already come to Italy in the age of Tarquinius Priscus, no credit is to be given. It originated in the fact that some Greek historian or other, perhaps Timæus, connected this migration with the settling of the Phocæans at Massilia. Livy has, perhaps, in this instance borrowed from Dionysius, and the latter from Timæus; for as he certainly made use of Dionysius in his eighth book, why should he not also in the fifth? He himself knew very little of Greek history.[118] But this account is evidently contradicted by that of Justin. Trogus Pompeius was born near Massilia, and had also apparently used for his forty-third book native chronicles; as from them only he could have got the account of the _decreta honorifica_ of the Romans to the Massiliotes, in return for the friendship shown them during the Gallic war, and likewise of the sea-fights of Massilia with the Carthaginians. Trogus knows nothing of the circumstance that the Gauls assisted the Phocæans; but according to him, these merely met with a friendly reception among the Ligurians, who also dwelt there for a long time. About the year 350, fifteen years therefore before this, Livy himself says, _gentem invisitatam, novas accolas, Gallos comparuisse_. Even the story of that Lucumo, who had called in the Gauls, pleads against it: referred to Clusium alone, it is absurd. Polybius dates the passage over the Alps from ten to twenty years before the conquest of Rome; Diodorus makes the Gauls burst upon Rome in one uninterrupted onslaught. Moreover, it is said that Melpum, in the country of the Insubrians, had been destroyed on the same day with Veii; and though we may not positively assert this exact coincidence, there can yet be no doubt but that the statement, on the whole, has hit the truth. Cornelius Nepos wrote it, who, as a native of the country beyond the Po, might have known the facts, and whose chronological accounts were very highly valued among the Romans. The Gauls can only have passed, either over the little St. Bernard, or over the Simplon. The former is not likely, because their country reached to the Ticinus only; if they had crossed over the little St. Bernard, they must needs also have occupied the whole of the territory between that mountain and the Ticinus. Now, the Salassians, for aught that we know, may have been a Gallic people; but this is not certain, and moreover, on the banks of the Ticinus, between them and the Gauls who had come over the Alps, there still dwelt the Lævians; surely then, there were still at that time also Ligurians on the Ticinus.

Melpum must have stood near the spot where Milan is now. The situation of Milan is exceedingly favourable, and often as it has been destroyed, it has been always restored; so that it is not impossible that Melpum was the same town. Without doubt, the Gallic migration came sweeping on with headlong impetuosity, like the billows of a stormy sea; how then can we suppose that Melpum had withstood the barbarians for two hundred years, or that they had conquered it, and had left the Etruscans undisturbed during the whole of that time? It is absurd to believe this, merely to bear out an uncritical assertion of Livy’s. Twelve years after the taking of Rome, as is usually computed; or, according to a more correct chronology, nine years later, the Triballians, who in the times of Herodotus abode in Lower Hungary, were seen in Thrace, having been driven out of their own country by the Gauls. It is evident that the same movement which led them to the Middle Danube, extended likewise to the Po. And should they who in a few days came from Clusium to Rome, and afterwards appeared also in Apulia, have sat still in a corner for two hundred years?

These Gauls were partly Celts, but the great body of them were Belgians or _Cymri_. This may be gleaned from the fact that their king, as well as he who appears before Delphi, is called Brennus; _Brenin_, according to Adelung in Mithridates, means in Welsh and _Bas Breton_ a king. But what gave rise to the whole migration? The statement of Livy that a famine had driven forth the Gauls, is quite in the character of all those traditions about national migrations which we find in Saxo Grammaticus, in Paul Warnefrid from the Swedish lays, in the Tyrrhenian legends concerning Lydia, and elsewhere. In the case of a people however, like the Celts, any special account of this kind, in which, as here, even the leaders are named, is no more worthy of belief than all other legends among nations who have not the use of writing. It is indeed certain that the Celts had Greek letters; but they may only have used them for the purposes of every day life, and it is well known that they were not allowed to commit the old lays to writing. The Celts, however, had a tradition which we meet with in Ammianus Marcellinus, that Britain had been one of their most ancient seats. We now find them in Britain, Ireland, in different places in Spain, and in two places in Portugal. For the Celticans and Celts in Portugal, who dwelt in Algarve and Alemtejo, and between the Mincio and Douro, are pure Celts; the Celtiberians in Spain are a mixture of Celts and Iberians: they live in the heart of the mountain range between Saragossa and Madrid, which is connected with the Pyrenees.[119] Of these Celts in Spain the same tradition has been preserved, as of their appearance in Italy: they are said to have been driven thither by famine, and to have spread by conquest. Yet here is again a confusion of the two opposite poles in the tradition. In no instance where a national migration has taken place, is the invading people to be found in scattered spots; but the inhabitants of such districts, especially in mountains, are the remnants of the ancient population which has emigrated, or been changed. Among the Celtiberians, the Iberians prevail; the Celts are the indigenous people which amalgamated with the Iberians who broke in from Africa: there may have arisen a sort of mixed language; the names of places are Iberian. Similar transformations of a people are sometimes met with in history. The Wendes in Germany, owing to the insignificance of their colonies, have for the most part adopted the German language, without there having been any German conquest or German princes; and yet they were originally Sclavonians, as well as the Cassubians who speak Wendish to this day. That the Iberians spread across the Pyrenees, is proved by the existence of the Aquitanians, who were pure Hispanians, as Cæsar informs us; nor is there any reason to suppose that this was only a change of later times. Basques are still dwelling north of the Pyrenees. And there is, moreover, the statement of Scylax, that the people from the Pyrenees to the Rhone was a mixture of Iberians and Ligurians. The Celts once possessed the whole of Spain, with the exception of Andalusia; and besides this, Southern France, Ireland, and part of England. The boundary of the Iberians in the north, we cannot lay down with certainty; in the earlier ages, it was the Sierra Morena. In the south, we find them in Southern Spain; in the Balearic isles; in Sardinia, Corsica, and Western Sicily; and lastly also, in Africa.

Distinct from the Celts, but of the same stock, are the _Cymri_ or Belgians: this distinction, concerning which I have given my opinion years ago, is of essential importance. Cæsar’s notion that the Belgians were a mixture of Germans and Celts, is erroneous: there is a wide difference between them and the Germans, although a small number of words in their language are Germanic. In Cæsar’s time, they were undoubtedly Cymri, with a sprinkling of Germans whom they had met with in their migration. Cymri lived also in a part of Britain: probably they were the older inhabitants, who had been dislodged by the Gales. The Gales were pushed on by the Iberians; the Cymri by the Gales; and the Germans by the Cymri, who at that time were settled in the north of France and in the Netherlands, where Celts had afterwards their abode.

Southern France from the Pyrenees, Lower Languedoc, and the valley of the Rhone, the Piemontese country, and Lombardy also as far as the Etruscans, were inhabited by the Ligurians, a great European nation. Scylax already says, that in Lower Languedoc, Iberians and Ligurians were living mixed up together. In later times which cannot be particularised, the Celts drove the Iberians from Spain to the Garonne; and the latter pushed on the Ligurians to the neighbourhood of Aix in Provence;--an event which may be traced in its consequences. By this impulse the Gauls and Cymri together were driven into emigration: some of the Cymri part from the Gauls, and go on migrating; others march with them. Gauls and Cymri differ very much from each other: their grammar and language are quite distinct. The two great migrations of Bellovesus and Sigovesus, mentioned by Livy, are to be considered as true, although the leaders may be looked upon as mere personifications. Of these expeditions, the one, penetrating through the Etruscan Alpine tribes and the Ligurians into Italy, overthrows the Etruscan towns in the Lombard plain; the other proceeds northward from the Alps. The Rhætians, the Lepontines, the Camunians, the Stonians and other Alpine peoples in the Tyrol and in the country of the Grisons, including Verona, stand out alone like islands, amid the immigrating Gauls who poured round them like a sea; and they remind us of the Celts in Spain. This migration, in which the Helvetians did not join, I have already sufficiently discussed in my little historical writings, in the essay on the Scythians and Sarmatians. It first proceeds round the Black forest, then stops a while, and then goes on to the middle Danube, Hungary and Lower Sclavonia: here they undertake the difficult conquest of the highlands, spread from thence into Macedonia, Thrace, Bulgaria, and then across the Danube as far as the Dnieper; and then, pushed back by the Sarmatians, they again throw themselves into Europe. It is the only known instance, in which it is apparent that such a torrent rushes forth until it meets with insurmountable obstacles, and then returns again with unabated violence. As late as the times when Herodotus still wrote, about 320 A. U. C. the nations on the banks of the middle and lower Danube were living undisturbed in their abodes. The Scythians inhabited Moldavia and Wallachia as far as Transylvania; there the Agathyrsians were settled, and the Triballians in Sclavonia and Lower Hungary. But nine years after the taking of Rome by the Gauls, the Triballians make their appearance near Abdera in Thrace, and afterwards they are seen on the banks of the southern Danube in Bulgaria. The Scythians, on the other hand, are found as early as the reign of Philip to have been limited to Bessarabia; at the time of Alexander the Getæ are in possession of Moldavia and Wallachia. The people, who effect these changes, are the Gauls, and by means of the same emigration as that in which they poured themselves over Italy.

Scylax (Ol. 106.) knows of Gauls in the inmost recesses of the Adriatic, the Carnians and Noricans of later times. They did not, he says, join the migration: part of the Gauls, who had advanced further, lived in Sirmium; from thence, under the name of Bastarnians, they cross the Danube, and compel the Getæ to throw themselves into Hungary and Transylvania; afterwards they spread in the Ukraine. From the important inscription of Olbia, which Köhler has edited, we see that the Galatians, and, together with them, the Scirians, afterwards a German people, are dwelling near the Dnieper; and this agrees perfectly well with the fact, that the Scythians now vanish. For in the east also there is a national migration, that of the Sarmatians, a people which Herodotus only knows as dwelling beyond the Tanais. Scylax, seventy years afterwards, speaks of them as being settled on this side of it; according to the Olbian inscription, they are on the other bank of the Dnieper; under Augustus, they are in Wallachia: they destroy the Greek towns in that neighbourhood. This movement was afterwards the cause of the irruption of the Cymri or Cimbrians, as in the migrations of the Celts the Cymri were always included. To them belong the Bastarnians, who dwelt in Southern Poland and in Dacia, and were driven out by the Sarmatians. Johann von Müller indeed was the first to recognise the truth of Posidonius’ statement, that the Cimbrians did not come from Jutland but from the East; but he saw not yet, that they were originally Belgians, or, as the Greeks called it by a general name, Κέλται. To claim the victories of the Cimbrians for the German nation is foolish.

The extent of these emigrations reached in Germany as far as the Mayne and the Thuringian forest. Celts, before Cæsar’s days, were settled even in Bohemia, and some tribes of them remained in the time of Tacitus; the Gothinians at that time still spoke Gallic; the Noricans in Austria were of Celtic descent. The Rhætians were Etruscans; the Vindelicians, Liburnians. The Helvetians conquered the greatest part of Switzerland; yet near the St. Gotthardt some of the old population were left. The Gauls penetrated into Italy by a very narrow track, very likely across the Simplon: it was only by means of the Valais that they kept up the connection with the people of their own stock beyond the Alps. As far as Aosta, the ancient inhabitants stood their ground: for, the Salassians, Taurinians, &c., were Ligurians, and the tribes towards the St. Gotthardt Etruscans. The Ligurians were a warlike race and held their own; they dwelt on both sides of the Alps: the Allobroges, however, were pure Celts. On this account, Cisalpine Gaul appears too large on the maps, even on that of d’Anville: it did not contain Piedmont, but only the Austrian Milanese, Bergamo and Brescia, Lombardy south of the Po to the Adriatic, and north of the Po to the neighbourhood of Lake Garda. All the country, therefore, which they conquered, was in the plain; and even for this reason their migration cannot have lasted as long as Livy states.

In the history of the Gallic migration it is again shown how little we know of the history of Italy in general. Our knowledge is limited to Rome: it is just the same as if of all the historical sources of the whole of the German empire, the annals of one imperial town only had been preserved. From Livy’s account, it might appear as if the Gauls had advanced against Rome alone, and as if this had been their only object. And yet this immigration has changed the whole aspect of Italy. For when once the Gauls had crossed the Apennines, there was nothing to hinder them from marching by any road into Southern Italy; and indeed we find some mention of their further progress to the south. The Umbrians still dwelt as far as the lower Padus in the present Romagna and Urbino, in parts of which Liburnians also were living. Polybius says, that many nations there had become tributary to the Gauls; of the Umbrians this is certain. In history, we first find the Gauls in Clusium, where they are said to have made their appearance immediately on their immigration, owing to the revenge of a high-born citizen of the place who called them in against the town of his birth. Yet this remains doubtful: if there should be any truth in it, it is much more likely that the offended man crossed the Apennines, and fetched the avengers from thence. Clusium had been no more spoken of since the time of Porsena; that its people seek assistance with Rome, is a proof how little this northern town of Etruria shared in the fate of the southern ones; even an alliance with Rome may be conjectured. The danger was, however, so great, that every jealousy must have been hushed by it. The natural road for the Gauls would have been down by the shores of the Adriatic; then through the country of the Umbrians, who were tributary to them, and already completely broken down; and through the Romagna, across the Apennines. The Apennines, however, which separate Tuscany and the Romagna, are very difficult to pass over, and particularly troublesome for beasts of burthen. As from this side, therefore, which the Etruscans moreover had purposely allowed to grow wild, the Gauls could not break in, though they had made an attempt to do so, they then crossed the Apennines near Clusium, and appeared before this town. Clusium is the key of the valley of the Tiber; if it were taken, this as well as the road on the Arno would be open to the Gauls, who might then advance upon Arezzo in its rear. The Romans therefore looked upon the fate of Clusium as decisive of their own. The people of Clusium solicit the alliance of powerful Rome; the Romans with well-judged readiness accede to it, and send an embassy to the Gauls, ordering them to go away. According to a more probable account, the latter had demanded from the Clusians the division of the land, as a condition of peace; not, as it was customary among the Romans, as a charge imposed upon a people already conquered: if this be correct, the Romans sent that embassy trusting to their might. But the Gauls treated the ambassadors with scorn, and these allowed themselves to be carried away by their military ardour to join the Etruscans in fighting against them: it may perhaps have been only a small isolated affray. This is what Livy tells us; and he proceeds to state, that the Gauls, as soon as they had become aware of this violation of the law of nations, had caused the signal for retreat to be sounded, and had called upon the gods for vengeance, intending forthwith to march against Rome. Here is evidently a mere legend. A barbarous people could not possibly have entertained such regards; nor was there in this case any real violation of international law, as the Romans stood in no connexion whatever with the Gauls. But the fall of Rome must needs be laid to the account of a _Nefas_, against which no power of man could avail. Roman vanity besides plays its part; and the ambassadors were said to have so greatly distinguished themselves, that they were more conspicuous than the Etruscans. In contradiction to these events, it is now stated that the Gauls had sent to Rome to demand the giving up of those ambassadors; that the senate hesitated and left the decision to the people, on which the latter not only refused compliance, but even appointed the same ambassadors as military tribunes; and that in consequence the Gauls with all their force immediately marched against the surprised city. Livy here again speaks of the _Populus_, to which the senate refers the decision; yet this can only be the patrician community, as it alone could have decided on the fate of those who belonged to that class. The Romans have, in this instance, been unfairly charged with want of honesty. But the whole story is certainly derived from later writers, who conferred upon barbarians a right, to which none but a people within the pale of international law could lay any claim. Nor is the statement by any means a general one, that the three ambassadors, the Fabii, were chosen military tribunes. A different account is found in Diodorus, who in this place must have made use of Roman sources written in Greek, that is to say, of Fabius; as he calls the people of Cære Καίριοι, and not Ἀγυλλαῖοι. He speaks of one single ambassador, who as a son of a military tribune had fought against the Gauls. This at least shows how little the history can as yet be relied upon. The battle of the Alia was on the sixteenth of July, and the military tribunes entered upon their office the first of the same month, whilst Clusium is only a good three days’ march from Rome.

The Gauls marched in innumerable hosts from Clusium to Rome. They were for a long time the people most dreaded by the Romans, even so late as in the Cisalpine war of 527; and likewise by all the nations with which they came into contact, as far as the remotest East and the Ukraine. For the knowledge of their manners and customs, Polybius and Diodorus are our best guides: under Cæsar they were already changed. In the description of their persons, we have a glimpse of the Gael, or Highlander of the present day;--tall bodies, blue eyes, coarse hair. Their very dress and arms are those of the Gael; their clothing being checkered and variegated tartans (_sagula virgata versicoloria_), their weapons the Highland claymores, broad war-swords without points. They had an immense number of horns, such as were long to be met with in the Highlands; and they threw themselves in huge irregular masses, and with terrible fury upon the enemy, those in the rear pushing on those in front, so that no line of battle then in use could withstand the shock. Against them the Romans should have employed the phalanx, and doubled it, until they became accustomed to such a foe, and gained the mastery by dint of their superior skill. If they could stand the first onset, then the Gauls were sure to fall into confusion, and were afterwards easily routed. The Gauls who in later times were defeated by them, were the descendants of those who had been born in Italy, and had very much fallen off in courage and strength. The Goths under Vitigis, not fifty years after Theodoric’s immigration into Italy, were cowards, and did not hold their ground against the twenty thousand men of Belisarius: thus quickly do barbarians degenerate in such a climate. Terrible also were the Gauls for their appalling cruelty! Wherever they settled, the original towns and their inhabitants utterly vanished from the face of the earth. In their own homes they had the feudal system and a priestly government. The Druids, who were their only rulers, avenged the oppressed people upon the chiefs, and in their turn were its tyrants. The whole of the people were serfs; which proves that the Gauls, even in their own country, were a race of conquerors who had enslaved an older population. Their wealth in gold is much talked of; and yet there are no rivers in France by which gold is washed, and the Pyrenees were at that time no more in their possession: the gold must, therefore, have been bartered. Much of it may be only exaggeration; and when individual chieftains wore golden chains, the ancient poets may have extended this to the whole nation, as popular poetry, particularly in such embellishments, is apt to give itself great license.

Pliny says, that the _census_ before the Gallic calamity had amounted to 150,000; but this only includes the men who had votes, and neither women, children, slaves, nor foreigners. When we take this into the account, the number of inhabitants was immense. Should this statement, however, be well founded, it must not be understood of the residents in the city alone; for these were much fewer. When we read in Diodorus that every one was called out to fight against the Gauls, and that forty thousand men assembled at the summons, this is very probable: there is the testimony of Polybius that Latins and Hernicans were included in the host. According to another account, the Romans took the field against the Gauls with twenty-four thousand men; that is to say, with four country, and four city legions. The country legions were raised from the plebeians only; they served in the order of the classes, very likely in maniples. The city legions contained all those who did not belong to the plebeians and patricians, all the ærarians, proletarians, freedmen, artisans, who at other times had never yet faced the enemy; they were certainly not armed with the _pilum_, nor arrayed _manipulatim_, but provided with pikes, and drawn up in phalanx. As to the country legions, they consisted half of Latins and half of Romans, there being in each maniple a Roman and a Latin century; and if in those days there were four of these legions, this would be twelve thousand men, as the legion together with its reserve was then three thousand strong. When therefore one statement gives twenty-four thousand, we see that it implies four country, and four irregular city legions. Thus there were only six thousand plebeians, so that, had the legions contained Romans exclusively, there would not indeed have been more than twelve thousand of them; but if to these we add twelve thousand irregular troops and sixteen thousand allies, the number of forty thousand is then correct. If so, the population of Rome was not so large as that of Athens in the Peloponnesian war, which is very likely. The horsemen are not reckoned in this calculation; forty thousand men must, however, be deemed the maximum of the whole army. There seems to be no exaggeration in this; so that on the whole, the battle on the Alia ranks among those events which are historical. It is surprising that the Romans elected no dictator for the battle; they cannot be said to have looked upon that war as quite an ordinary one, as in that case they would not have summoned all their forces to the fight. Yet they did not estimate the danger to its full extent. There were always fresh swarms crossing the Alps; the Senonians also now make their appearance, seeking out places where to dwell. They, like the Germans afterwards, asked for land, on beholding the Insubrians, Boians, and others already settled in the country. They had taken up their abodes in the Umbrian district near the sea; but only till they should find larger and more convenient ones.

The river Alia has no remarkable features. It would almost seem that the country in the neighbourhood has changed; it is only by the distances which are given, that we can tell what river it was. The ancients describe it as a stream with high embankments; but the river which we must now take for it, has none. The name is now obsolete. In the summer, however, all these rivers have very little water; and therefore the position behind it could not have availed much. The Romans committed the great fault of giving battle with troops swept together in haste, to an enemy hitherto invincible. The hills near which the right wing is said to have been placed, are no more to be recognised: they may perhaps have been only small mounds of earth.[120] At all events, the opposing a long line to the huge masses of the enemy was quite absurd. The Gauls, on the other hand, could without any trouble turn off to the left; and, passing the river higher up, where it was more easy to be forded, they very judiciously threw themselves with the whole of their might on the right wing, which consisted of the irregulars. These at first stood their ground, but not for long; and when they fled, all the rest of the line, which as yet seems to have stood quite useless, was seized with panic. Fright preceded the Gauls, as, like the Turks, they devastated every thing wherever they went. (Throughout the _Cispadana_ they destroyed the towns, they themselves dwelling in villages only: when the Romans afterwards conquered the country of the Insubrians, they found not a trace any where of the former population.) This, instead of calling forth a desperate resistance, paralysed the courage of the Romans. Thus they were defeated on the Alia in the most inglorious manner. The Gauls had attacked them in the rear, and cut them off from the road to Rome: part of them fled to the Tiber, of whom some escaped through the river, and others were drowned; and part took refuge in a forest. Yet the slaughter must have been immense; and it is inconceivable, how Livy could speak only of the disgrace. Had not the Roman army been all but annihilated, it would not have been necessary to have given up the defence of the city so entirely, as was done: for it was left undefended and abandoned by all. Many, instead of returning to Rome, ran away to Veii; some few only, who had fled along the high road, entered the city by the _Porta Collina_. Rome was exhausted; its force was scattered to the winds, its legions powerless; its allies also who could bear arms had most of them shared in the defeat, and they partly expected the dreadful enemy in their own homes. In Rome it was believed that the whole of the army was destroyed: nothing was known of those at Veii. Within its walls were only old men, women and children; defence was not to be thought of. It is not, however, to be supposed that the gates were left open, and that the Gauls, fearing an ambush, had waited several days before the town. More likely is what others relate, that the gates were barricaded. We may form a very lively image of the condition of Rome after this battle, by comparing it with the similar situation of Moscow just before the fire. People were convinced that a long defence was impossible, as in all likelihood provisions were scarce. Livy has a false idea of the evacuation of the city, as if the defenceless inhabitants in their consternation had remained immoveable, and part of them had been received into the Capitol. But it had been resolved to defend the Capitol. The tribune Sulpicius, with about a thousand men had taken refuge in it. There was an old well there, which is still in existence, and without which the garrison would soon have died of thirst. No antiquary knew of it; but I discovered it from the accounts of the people living there: it is sunk through the rock to the level of the Tiber, yet its water is not fit to drink. The Capitol was scarped, and thereby inaccessible: the way to it, leading from the Forum and the Via Sacra, was a _clivus_, which was shut by a gate at the bottom and on the top. The rock was not as steep as in later times,--this is shown by the account of the assault,--but it was still very strong. Whether, as was the case in Moscow, some remained behind in the town, who, in their confusion, did not consider what an enemy they had to deal with, we cannot decide. The story is very fine, and reminds us of the taking of the Acropolis by the Persians, where also the old men allow themselves to be put to the sword by the enemy. Yet, in spite of the improbable character of the incident, I am inclined to believe, that several old patricians,--the number may not be quite historical,--seated themselves in their robes of office on the curule chairs in the Forum; and that the _Pontifex Maximus_ consecrated them for death. Such consecrations were a well-known Roman custom. And, surely, it is also true, that the Gauls were astounded at finding the town forsaken, and only those old men immoveably sitting; and that, mistaking them for images or phantoms, they did nothing, until one of them struck a Gaul who touched him; whereupon all were slain. To lay hand on themselves, was at variance with the habits of the Romans, whose feelings, on the whole, were in many things much more correct, and much more akin to ours, than those of many other nations of old. All hope for their fatherland had indeed been given up by the old men; but the Capitol was still tenable, and people chose rather to die in an attempt at resistance, than to flee away to Veii, where, after all, they would not have been able to hold out. The sacred things were taken to Cære. The hope of the Romans was now, that the barbarians would get tired of the siege. The Capitol had been provisioned for some time to come; there may have been a couple of thousand persons in it; public and private buildings, all the temples were used as dwellings. The Gauls made dreadful havoc in Rome, still more so than the Spaniards and Germans did in 1527. The soldier sacks, destroys, when he finds no men; he gets drunk, and fire breaks out quite undesignedly, as at Moscow;--the whole town was laid in ashes, with the exception of some houses on the Palatine where the chiefs of the Gauls were living. It is to be wondered at, that single monuments of the earlier times outside of the Capitol are still talked of; statues were said to have been preserved: it is true that the _Travertino_ is tolerably fireproof. That Rome was burnt down, is certain; at the rebuilding of the city, the old streets were not even restored.

The Gauls were now lying in the town. At first they made an assault on the _clivus_, and were repulsed with loss; which is rather surprising, as we know that the Romans had before succeeded in an attack upon the same _clivus_ against Appius Herdonius. Afterwards they discovered the footsteps of a messenger, who had been sent from Veii to provide for the affairs of the city in the due forms of law. For, the Romans on the Capitol were patricians, they represented the curies and the government; those who had gathered together at Veii, represented the tribes, but had no leaders. The tribes had decided upon recalling Camillus and making him dictator; Pontius Cominius was therefore sent to Rome to obtain the consent of the senate and the curies. This was quite in the spirit of the olden times. If the curies had interdicted him _aqua et igni_, they only could recall him after a previous decree of the senate. But, if he had gone into voluntary exile, and, by accepting the right of citizenship at Ardea, had renounced the Roman one before a decree of the centuries had been passed against him, it again rested,--he being a patrician,--with the curies alone, to receive him anew as a citizen; otherwise he would have been no dictator, nor would he have considered himself as such.