that funeral
speeches might be made over their graves as over those of men, and
likewise that they might be driven in chariots to the public games.

Camillus commanded in another war with the Falisci, also an Etruscan
race, and laid siege to their city. The sons of almost all the chief
families were in charge of a sort of schoolmaster, who taught them both
reading and all kinds of exercises. One day this man, pretending to take
the boys out walking, led them all into the enemy's camp, to the tent of
Camillus, where he told that he brought them all, and with them the
place, since the Romans had only to threaten their lives to make their
fathers deliver up the city. Camillus, however, was so shocked at such
perfidy, that he immediately bade the lictors strip the fellow
instantly, and give the boys rods with which to scourge him back into
the town. Their fathers were so grateful that they made peace at once,
and about the same time the AEqui were also conquered; and the commons
and open lands belonging to Veii being divided, so that each Roman
freeman had six acres, the plebeians were contented for the time.

[Illustration]

The truth seems to have been that these Etruscan nations were weakened
by a great new nation coming on them from the North. They were what the
Romans called Galli or Gauls, one of the great races of the old stock
which has always been finding its way westward into Europe, and they had
their home north of the Alps, but they were always pressing on and on,
and had long since made settlements in northern Italy. They were in
clans, each obedient to one chief as a father, and joining together in
one brotherhood. They had lands to which whole families had a common
right, and when their numbers outgrew what the land could maintain, the
bolder ones would set off with their wives, children, and cattle to
find new homes. The Greeks and Romans themselves had begun first in the
same way, and their tribes, and the claims of all to the common land,
were the remains of the old way; but they had been settled in cities so
long that this had been forgotten, and they were very different people
from the wild men who spoke what we call Welsh, and wore checked tartan
trews and plaids, with gold collars round their necks, round shields,
huge broadswords, and their red or black hair long and shaggy. The
Romans knew little or nothing about what passed beyond their own
Apennines, and went on with their own quarrels. Camillus