o occupy and provision the
Capitol (though they had not sufficient forces to defend their walls)
and to send their women and children to Veii. When on the third day the
Gauls took possession, they found the city occupied only by those aged
patricians who had held high office in the state. For a while the Gauls
withheld their hands out of awe and reverence, but the ruder passions
soon prevailed. The city was sacked and burnt; but the Capitol itself
withstood a siege of more than six months, saved from surprise on one
occasion only by the wakefulness of the sacred geese and the courage of
Marcus Manlius. At last the Gauls consented to accept a ransom of a
thousand pounds of gold. As it was being weighed out, the Roman tribune
complained of some unfairness. Brennus at once threw his heavy sword
into the scale; and when asked the meaning of the act, replied that it
meant _Vae victis_ ("woe to the conquered"). The Gauls returned home
with their plunder, leaving Rome in a condition from which she took long
to recover. A later legend, probably an invention, represents M. Furius
Camillus as suddenly appearing with an avenging army at the moment when
the gold was being weighed, and defeating Brennus and all his host.

See null v. 33-49; Plutarch, _Camillus_, 17, 22, 28; Polybius i. 6,
ii. 18; Dion. Halic. xiii. 7.

(2) The second Brennus is said to have been one of the leaders of an
inroad made by the Gauls from the east of the Adriatic into Thrace and
Macedonia (280), when they defeated and slew Ptolemy Ceraunus, then king
of Macedonia. Whether Brennus took part in this first invasion or not is
uncertain; but its success led him to urge his countrymen to a second
expedition, when he marched with a large army through Macedonia and
Thessaly until he reached Thermopylae. To this point the united forces
of the northern Greeks--Athenians, Phocians, Boeotians and
Aetolians--had fallen back; and here the Greeks a second time held their
foreign invaders in check for many days, and a second time had their
rear turned, owing to the treachery of some of the natives, by the same
path which had been discovered to the Persians two hundred years before.
Brennus and his Gauls marched on to Delphi, of whose sacred treasures
they had heard much. But the little force which the Delphians and their
neighbours had collected--about 4000 men--favoured by the strength of
their position, made a successful defence. They rolled down rocks upon
their