s a noise outside--Camillus was
come. The Gauls were cut down and slain among the ruins, those who fled
were killed by the people in the country as they wandered in the fields,
and not one returned to tell the tale. So the ransom of the Capitol was
rescued, and was laid up by Camillus in the vaults as a reserve for
future danger.

This was the Roman story, but their best historians say that it is made
better for Rome than is quite the truth, for that the Capitol was really
conquered, and the Gauls helped themselves to whatever they chose and
went off with it, though sickness and weariness made them afterwards
disperse, so that they were mostly cut off by the country people.

Every old record had been lost and destroyed, so that, before this,
Roman history can only be hearsay, derived from what the survivors
recollected; and the whole of the buildings, temples, senate-house, and
dwellings lay in ruins. Some of the citizens wished to change the site
of the city to Veii; but Camillus, who was Dictator, was resolved to
hold fast by the hearths of their fathers, and while the debate was
going on in the ruins of the senate-house a troop of soldiers were
marching in, and the centurion was heard calling out, "Plant your ensign
here; this is a good place to stay in." "A happy omen," cried one of the
senators; "I adore the gods who gave it." So it was settled to rebuild
the city, and in digging among the ruins there were found the golden
rod of Romulus, the brazen tables on which the Laws of the Twelve Tables
were engraved, and other brasses with records of treaties with other
nations. Fabius was accused of having done all the harm by having broken
the law of nations, but he was spared at the entreaty of his friends.
Manlius was surnamed Capitolinus, and had a house granted him on the
Capitol; and Camillus when he laid down his dictatorship, was saluted as
like Romulus--another founder of Rome.

The new buildings were larger and more ornamented than the old ones; but
the lines of the old underground drains, built in the mighty Etruscan
fashion by the elder Tarquin as it was said, were not followed, and this
tended to render Rome more unhealthy, so that few of her richer citizens
lived there in summer or autumn, but went out to country houses on the
hills.

[Illustration: ENTRY OF THE FORUM ROMANUM BY THE VIA SACRA]

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PLEBEIAN CONSULATE.

B.C. 367.

All the old enemies of Rome attacked her again