Summary of Book V
AT the siege of Veii winter quarters were constructed
for the soldiers. This, being a new departure, stirred the
ire of the tribunes of the plebs, who complained that the
plebs were given no rest from warfare even in winter.
The cavalry began then for the first time to serve on their
own mounts. An inundation from the Alban Lake having
occurred, a soothsayer was captured from the enemy that
he might explain it. Furius Camillus the dictator captured Veii in a ten years' siege, transferred to Rome the
image of Juno, and sent a tithe of the spoils to Apollo at
Delphi. When the same man was besieging the Falisci
as military tribune, he restored to their parents the sons
of the enemy who had been betrayed, whereupon the
Falisci surrendered and he obtained the victory by his
justice. On the death of one of the censors, Gaius Julius,
Marcus Cornelius was chosen to fill out his term, but
this was never afterwards done because in that five-year
period Rome was taken. Furius Camillus, having been
cited for trial by Lucius Apuleius, a tribune of the
plebs, went into exile. When the Gallic Senones were
besieging Clusium and the envoys sent by the senate to
arrange a peace between them and the Clusini fought in
the army of the Clusini, the Senones were angered and
marched to the attack of Rome. Defeating the Romans on
the Allia they captured the City, all but the Capitol, in
which the Romans of fighting age had taken refuge, and
slew the elders, who, dressed in the insignia of the offices
which they had held, were sitting in the vestibules of their
houses. And when, climbing up on the other side of the
Capitol, they had already come out on the top of it, they
were betrayed by the gabbling of geese and—chiefly by the
efforts of Marcus Manlius—were flung down. Later the
[p. 191]
Romans were reduced so low by hunger as to offer a
thousand pounds of gold and with this price to purchase
an end of the siege. Furius Camillus, having been
appointed dictator in his absence, came up with his
army in the midst of this very conference about the
terms of peace, and six months after their coming drove
out the Gauls from Rome and cut them to pieces. Men
said that they ought to remove to Veii because the City
had been burned and overthrown, but this counsel was
rejected, at the instance of Camillus. The people were
moved also by the omen of certain words that a centurion
was heard to utter, when having come into the Forum he
said to his company: “Halt, soldiers, we shall do well to
stop here.” A temple was erected to Jupiter Capitolinus,
because a voice had been heard before the capture of
the City, which declared that the Gauls were coming.
