ion between Latium and Rome. The conflict
between the Gauls and the Romans was not, like that between Rome and
Etruria or between Rome and Samnium, a collision of two political
powers which affect and modify each other; it may be compared to
those catastrophes of nature, after which the organism, if it is not
destroyed, immediately resumes its equilibrium. The Gauls often
returned to Latium: as in the year 387, when Camillus defeated them
at Alba--the last victory of the aged hero, who had been six times
military tribune with consular powers, and five times dictator, and
had four times marched in triumph to the Capitol; in the year 393,
when the dictator Titus Quinctius Pennus encamped opposite to them
not five miles from the city at the bridge of the Anio, but before any
encounter took place the Gallic host marched onward to Campania; in
the year 394, when the dictator Quintus Servilius Ahala fought in
front of the Colline gate with the hordes returning from Campania; in
the year 396, when the dictator Gaius Sulpicius Peticus inflicted on
them a signal defeat; in the year 404, when they even spent the winter
encamped upon the Alban mount and joined with the Greek pirates along
the coast for plunder, till Lucius Furius Camillus, the son of the
celebrated general, in the following year dislodged them--an incident
which came to the ears of Aristotle who was contemporary (370-432) in
Athens. But these predatory expeditions, formidable and troublesome
as they may have been, were rather incidental misfortunes than events
of political significance; and their most essential result was, that
the Romans were more and more regarded by themselves and by foreigners
as the bulwark of the civilized nations of Italy against the onset
of the dreaded barbarians--a view which tended more than is usually
supposed to further their subsequent claim to universal empire.

Further Conquests of Rome in Etruria--
South Etruria Roman

The Tuscans, who had taken advantage of the Celtic attack on Rome to
assail Veii, had accomplished nothing, because they had appeared in
insufficient force; the barbarians had scarcely departed, when the
heavy arm of Latium descended on the Tuscans with undiminished weight.
After the Etruscans had been repeatedly defeated, the whole of
southern Etruria as far as the Ciminian hills remained in the hands
of the Romans, who formed four new tribes in the territories of Veii,
Capena, and Falerii (367), and secured t