LITMIR.BIZ

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it will be remembered, the two Roman heroes who vanquished in single combat the two Gallic giants who insolently defied Rome. The gratitude towards them was general and of long duration, for two centuries afterwards (in the year 167 B.C.) the head of the Gaul with his tongue out still appeared at Rome, above the shop of a money-changer, on a circular sign-board, called “the Kymrian shield” (scutum Cimbricum). After seventeen years’ stay in Latium, the Gauls at last withdrew, and returned to their adopted country in those lovely valleys of the Po which already bore the name of Cisalpine Gaul. They began to get disgusted with a wandering life. Their population multiplied; their towns spread; their fields were better cultivated; their manners became less barbarous. For fifty years there was scarcely any trace of hostility or even contact between them and the Romans. But at the beginning of the third century before our era, the coalition of the Samnites and Etruscans against Rome was near its climax; they eagerly pressed the Gauls to join, and the latter assented easily. Then commenced the second period of struggles between the two peoples. Rome had taken breath, and had grown much more rapidly than her rivals. Instead of shutting herself up, as heretofore, within her walls, she forthwith raised three armies, took the offensive against the coalitionists, and carried the war into their territory. The Etruscans rushed to the defence of their hearths. The two consuls, Fabius and Decius, immediately attacked the Samnites and Gauls at the foot of the Apennines, close to Sentinum (now Sentina). The battle was just beginning, when a hind, pursued by a wolf from the mountains, passed in flight between the two armies, and threw herself upon the side of the Gauls, who slew her; the wolf turned towards the Romans, who let him go. “Comrades,” cried a soldier, “flight and death are on the side where you see stretched on the ground the hind of Diana; the wolf belongs to Mars; he is unwounded, and reminds us of our father and founder; we shall conquer even as he.” Nevertheless the battle went badly for the Romans; several legions were in flight, and Decius strove vainly to rally them. The memory of his father came across his mind. There was a belief amongst the Romans that if in the midst of an unsuccessful engagement the general devoted himself to the infernal gods, “panic and flight” passed forthwith to the enemies’ ranks. “Why daily?” said Decius to the grand pontiff, whom he had ordered to follow him and keep at his side in the flight; “ ’tis given to our race to die to avert public disasters.” He halted, placed a javelin beneath his feet, and covering his head with a fold of his robe, and supporting his chin on his right hand, repeated after the pontiff this sacred form of words:—

      “Janus, Jupiter, our father Mars, Quirinus, Bellona, Lares, … ye gods in whose power are we, we and our enemies, gods Manes, ye I adore; ye I pray, ye I adjure to give strength and victory to the Roman people, the children of Quirinus, and to send confusion, panic, and death amongst the enemies of the Roman people, the children of Quirinus. And, in these words for the republic of the children of Quirinus, for the army, for the legions, and for the allies of the Roman people, I devote to the gods Manes and to the grave the legions and the allies of the enemy and myself.”

      Then remounting, Decius charged into the middle of the Gauls, where he soon fell pierced with wounds; but the Romans recovered courage and gained the day; for heroism and piety have power over the hearts of men, so that at the moment of admiration they become capable of imitation.

      During this second period Rome was more than once in danger. In the year 283 B.C. the Gauls destroyed one of her armies near Aretium (Arezzo), and advanced to the Roman frontier, saying, “We are bound for Rome; the Gauls know how to take it.” Seventy-two years afterwards the Cisalpine Gauls swore they would not put off their baldricks till they had mounted the Capitol, and they arrived within three days’ march of Rome. At every appearance of this formidable enemy the alarm at Rome was great. The senate raised all its forces and summoned its allies. The people demanded a consultation of the Sibylline books, sacred volumes sold, it was said, to Tarquinius Priscus by the sibyl Amalthea, and containing the secret of the destinies of the Republic. They were actually opened in the year 228 B.C., and it was with terror found that the Gauls would twice take possession of the soil of Rome. On the advice of the priests, there was dug within the city, in the middle of the cattle-market, a huge pit, in which two Gauls, a man and a woman, were entombed alive; for thus they took possession of the soil of Rome, the oracle was fulfilled, and the mishap averted. Thirteen years afterwards, on occasion of the disaster at Cann, the same atrocity was again committed, at the same place and for the same cause. And by a strange contrast, there was at the committing of this barbarous act, “which was against Roman usage,” says Livy, a secret feeling of horror, for, to appease the manes of the victims, a sacrifice was instituted, which was celebrated every year at the pit, in the month of November.

      In spite of sometimes urgent peril, in spite of popular alarms, Rome, during the course of this period, from 299 to 258 B.C., maintained an increasing ascendency over the Gauls. She always cleared them off her territory, several times ravaged theirs, on the two banks of the Po—called respectively Transpadan and Cispadan Gaul, and gained the majority of the great battles she had to fight. Finally in the year 283 B.C., the proprietor Drusus, after having ravaged the country of the Senonic Gauls, carried off the very ingots and jewels, it was said, which had been given to their ancestors as the price of their retreat. Solemn proclamation was made that the ransom of the Capitol had returned within its walls; and, sixty years afterwards, the Consul M. Cl. Marcellus, having defeated at Clastidium a numerous army of Gauls, and with his own hand slain their general, Virdumar, had the honor of dedicating to the temple of Jupiter the third “grand spoils” taken since the foundation of Rome, and of ascending the Capitol, himself conveying the armor of Virdumar, for he had got hewn an oaken trunk, round which he had arranged the helmet, tunic, and breastplate of the barbarian king.

      Nor was war Rome’s only weapon against her enemies. Besides the ability of her generals and the discipline of her legions, she had the sagacity of her Senate. The Gauls were not wanting in intelligence or dexterity, but being too free to go quietly under a master’s hand, and too barbarous for self-government, carried away, as they were, by the interest or passion of the moment, they could not long act either in concert or with sameness of purpose. Far-sightedness and the spirit of persistence were, on the contrary, the familiar virtues of the Roman Senate. So soon as they had penetrated Cisalpine Gaul, they labored to gain there a permanent footing, either by sowing dissension amongst the Gallic peoplets that lived there, or by founding Roman colonies. In the year 283 B.C., several Roman families arrived, with colors flying and under the guidance of three triumvirs or commissioners, on a territory to the north-east, on the borders of the Adriatic. The triumvirs had a round hole dug, and there deposited some fruits and a handful of earth brought from Roman soil; then yoking to a plough, having a copper share, a white bull and a white heifer, they marked out by a furrow a large enclosure. The rest followed, flinging within the line the ridges thrown up by the plough. When the line was finished, the bull and the heifer were sacrificed with due pomp. It was a Roman colony come to settle at Sena, on the very site of the chief town of those Senonic Gauls who had been conquered and driven out. Fifteen years afterwards another Roman colony was founded at Ariminum (Rimini), on the frontier of the Bolan Gauls. Fifty years later still two others, on the two banks of the Po, Cremona and Placentia (Plaisance). Rome had then, in the midst of her enemies, garrisons, magazines of arms and provisions, and means of supervision and communication. Thence proceeded at one time troops, at another intrigues, to carry dismay or disunion amongst the Gauls.

      Towards the close of the third century before our era, the triumph of Rome in Cisalpine Gaul seemed nigh to accomplishment, when news arrived that the Romans’ most formidable enemy, Hannibal, meditating a passage from Africa into Italy by Spain and Gaul, was already at work, by his emissaries, to insure for his enterprise the concurrence of the Transalpine and Cisalpine Gauls. The Senate ordered the envoys they had just then at Carthage to traverse Gaul on returning, and seek out allies there against Hannibal. The envoys halted amongst the Gallo-Iberian peoplets who lived at the foot of the eastern Pyrenees. There, in the midst of the warriors assembled in arms, they charged them in the name of the great and powerful Roman people, not to suffer the Carthaginians to pass through their territory. Tumultuous laughter arose at a request that appeared so strange. “You wish us,” was the answer, “to draw down war upon ourselves to avert it from Italy, and to give our own fields over to devastation to save yours. We have no cause to complain of the Carthaginians or to be pleased with the Romans, or to take up arms for the Romans and against

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