Плутарх - Plutarch's Lives - Volume I

During the night he got them all under arms, left the city, and, after a march of about eight miles, encamped by the side of the Gabinian Road. But at daybreak, Camillus was upon him, in glittering armour, leading on the Romans who had now recovered their courage. After a long and fiercely contested battle they routed the Gauls and took their camp. Some of the fugitives were at once pursued and slain, but most of them straggled about the country, and were put to death by the people of the neighbouring towns and villages who sallied out upon them.

XXX. Thus was Rome strangely taken, and yet more strangely preserved, after having been for seven months in the possession of the Gauls, for they entered it a few days after the Ides of Quintilis, and left it about the Ides of February. Camillus, as we may easily imagine, entered the city in a triumph, as the saviour of his lost country, and the restorer of Rome to itself; for as he drove into the city he was accompanied by those who had before left it, with their wives and children, while those who had been besieged in the Capitol, and all but starved there, came out to meet him embracing one another, weeping, and scarcely believing in their present happiness. The priests and servants of the gods also appeared with such of the sacred things as they had saved, either by burying them on the spot, or by carrying them away, and now displayed these images, which had not been seen for so long a time, to the citizens, who greeted them with joy, as if the gods themselves were again returning to Rome. Camillus performed a sacrifice to the gods, and purified the city in the manner recommended by experts, and then proceeded to restore all the previously existing temples, while he himself added another to Aius Loquutius , or Rumour, having carefully sought out the place at which the voice in the night miraculously foretold the coming of the Gaulish host to Marcus Caedicius.

XXXI. With great difficulty the sites of the temples were cleared of rubbish by the zeal of Camillus and the labour of the priests; but as the city was utterly destroyed, and required to be entirely rebuilt, the people became disheartened at so great an undertaking. Men who had lost their all were inclined to wait, and indeed required rest after their misfortunes, rather than labours and toils, which neither their bodies nor their purses were able to endure. And thus it came to pass that they turned their thoughts a second time towards Veii, a city which stood quite ready to be inhabited. This gave opportunities to their mob orators to make speeches, as usual, which they knew would be pleasing to the people, in which Camillus was disrespectfully spoken of as depriving them of a city which stood ready to receive them, for his own prviate ambition, and was said to be compelling them to live encamped in the midst of ruins, and re–erect their houses in that vast heap of ashes, all in order that he might be called, not merely the leader and general of Rome, but might usurp the place of Romulus and be called her founder. Fearing disturbances, the Senate would not permit Camillus to lay down his dictatorship for a year, although he wished to do so, and although no dictator before this had ever remained in office for more than six months. In the meantime the senators themselves encouraged and consoled the people by personal appeals, pointing to the tombs and monuments of their ancestors, and recalling to their minds the temples and holy places which Romulus and Numa and the other kings had consecrated and left in charge to them. More especially they dwelt upon the omen of the newly severed head which had been found when the foundations of the Capitol were dug, by which it was proved that that spot was fated to become the head of Italy, and the fire of Vesta which the virgins had relighted after the war, and which it would be a disgrace for them to extinguish, and to abandon the city, whether they were to see it inhabited by foreigners or turned into fields for cattle to feed in. While persistently urging these considerations both in public speeches and in private interviews with the people, they were much affected by the lamentations of the poor over their helpless condition. The people begged that, as they had, like people after a shipwreck, saved their lives and nothing else, they might not, in addition to this misfortune, be compelled to put together the ruins of a city which had been utterly destroyed, while another was standing ready to receive them.

XXXII. Under these circumstances, Camillus determined to debate the question publicly. He himself made a long appeal on behalf of his native place, and many other speeches were delivered. Finally he rose, and bade Lucius Lucretius, whose privilege it was, to vote first, and then after him the rest in order. Silence was enforced, and Lucretius was just on the point of voting when a centurion in command of a detachment of the guard of the day marched by, and in a loud voice called to the standard–bearer: "Pitch the standard here: here it is best for us to stay." When these words were heard so opportunely in the midst of their deliberations about the future, Lucretius reverently said that he accepted the omen, and gave his vote in accordance with it, and his example was followed by all the rest. The people now showed a strange revulsion of feeling, for they encouraged one another to begin the work of rebuilding, not on any regular plan, but just as each man happened to find a convenient place for his work. Consequently they quickly rebuilt the city, for within a year it is said that both the city walls and the private houses were completed; but it was full of intricate, narrow lanes and inconveniently placed houses.

The priests, who had been ordered by Camillus to mark out the boundaries where the temples had stood among the general wreck, when in their circuit of the Palatine Hill they came upon the chapel of Mars, found it, like every other building, destroyed and levelled to the ground by the Gauls, but while thoroughly examining the place they found the augur's staff of Romulus hidden under a deep heap of ashes. This staff is curved at one end, and is called lituus . They use it to divide the heavens into squares when taking the auspices, just as Romulus himself did, as he was deeply skilled in divination. When he vanished from among mankind, the priests kept his staff just like any other sacred object. That at such a time, when all the other holy things perished, this should have been preserved, gave them good hopes of Rome, which that omen seemed to presage would be eternal.

XXXIII. Before they had finished rebuilding the city they became involved in a war, for the Aequians, Volscians, and Latins combined their forces and invaded the country, while the Etruscans besieged Sutrium, a city in alliance with Rome. The tribunes in command of the Roman forces encamped near the Marcian heights, and were there besieged by the Latins and in danger of having their camp taken. They sent to Rome for assistance, and the Romans appointed Camillus dictator for the third time. About this war there are two different accounts, of which I will mention the legendary one first:—It is said that the Latins, either merely as a pretext, or really wishing to amalgamate the two races as before, sent a demand to Rome for free unmarried women to be delivered up for them to marry. As the Romans were at their wits' ends what to do, because they feared to go to war, being scarcely recovered from their late mishap, while they suspected that the women would be used as hostages if they gave them up, and that the proposal of intermarriage was merely a feint, a slave girl named Tutula, or, as some say, Philotis, advised the magistrates to send her and the best–looking of the female slaves, dressed like brides of noble birth, and that she would manage the rest. The magistrates approved of her proposal, chose such girls as she thought suitable, and having dressed them in fine clothes and jewellery, handed them over to the Latins, who were encamped at no great distance from the city. At night the girls stole the daggers of the enemies, and Tutula or Philotis climbed up a wild fig–tree, stretched out her cloak behind her, and raised a torch as a signal, which had been agreed upon between her and the magistrates, though no other citizen knew of it. Wherefore, the soldiers rushed out of the gates with a great clamour and disturbance, calling to one another and scarcely able to keep their ranks as their chiefs hurried them along. When they reached the enemy's camp, they found them asleep and not expecting an attack, so that they took their camp and slew most of them. This took place on the nones of the month Quintilis, now called July, and the festival which then takes place is in memory of the events of that day. First they march out of the gates in a mass, calling out the common names of the country, such as Caius, Marcus, or Lucius, in imitation of their hurried calling for each other on that occasion. Next, female slaves splendidly dressed walk round laughing and romping with all whom they meet. These girls also perform a sort of fight among themselves, like those who on that day took their share in the fight with the Latins: and afterwards they sit down to a feast, under the shade of fig–tree boughs. They call this day the nonae caprotinae , probably from the wild fig–tree from which the slave girl waved the torch; for in Latin a wild fig–tree is called caprificus . Others say that most of these things were said and done when Romulus disappeared, for on this very day he was snatched away, outside the city gates, in a sudden storm and darkness, or as some think during an eclipse of the sun: and they say that the day is called nonae caprotiae from the place, because Romulus was carried off while holding a meeting of the entire people at the place called the Goat's Marsh, as is written in his life.