Episode III.09 - The Early Roman Republic

(Music)

-Theoretically, the Senate might discuss and decide only such issues as were presented to it

by a magistrate, and its decisions were merely advice (senatus consulta), without the force of

law. Actually, its prestige was so great that the magistrates nearly aways accepted its

recommendations.

11

-a quote by Will Durant, from his book, Caesar and Christ

(Music)

Hello and welcome to the Western Traditions Podcast. My name is Rob Paxton and this is the

ninth episode in the Roman Empire series. This episode will go over some heroes and stories

from the era of the early Republic in Rome, in the 5th and 4th centuries before Christ.

Now, the chronology of the entire period of the Roman Republic is frequently divided into three

eras, or stages. There is the early Republic, which essentially includes the centuries between

the fall of the last king in Rome and the beginning of the Punic Wars in 264 BC. This early

Republican era includes the sack of Rome by the Gauls in 390 BC.

The term Middle Republic is usually used to describe the time of the Punic Wars, between 264

BC and 146 BC. By the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC, Rome had eliminated most of

her significant geopolitical enemies in the Mediterranean.

The Late Republic, then, covers that period between this pinnacle of power at the end of the

Punic War, and the rise of the first Emperor Augustus, in 27 BC. The late Republic is

characterized by infighting, corruption and a slow movement away from the oligarchic

democracy of the past and the autocracy of the coming Empire.

This episode, though, will look at the early Republic, or, at least, what little we know about it.

As I have previously stated, the city of Rome was sacked and burned in 390 BC by the Gauls,

so good records of what happened before were mostly lost. Consequently, it seems possible

that these stories about the early Republic are somewhat legendary, possibly even fictitious.

Nevertheless, we will look at stories about three heroes from this period because, even if they

are embellished or even fabricated, they are the stories as told by later Romans, and so we

gain a good idea at least of what later Romans cherished about their history and about their

culture.

Furthermore, this early period gives us a good look at something known to Roman history as

the Conflict of the Orders. In the last episode, I already alluded to this phenomenon: the class

struggle between patricians and plebs. During this period, the era prior to the Punic Wars, we

see the conflict between these strata of society continuing to heat up, resulting in ongoing

changes in the structure of roman society and its government.

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about historical topics on the Patreon page.(Music)

Let us begin with Coriolanus. His account is possibly the most legendary, and the modern

consensus is that he did not even really exist. However, Plutarch, who is not afraid to describe

certain characters in his essays as somewhat legendary, appears to take it for granted that the

man was a real general of the Roman Republic.

According, then, to what ancients such as Plutarch and Livy have passed down to us,

Coriolanus was a real man, son of a patrician family, who led Roman forces in battle and

exemplified certain cherished aspects of Roman conduct.

His praenomen, or the first of his three names in the Roman nomenclature called tria nomina, is

uncertain. It may have been Caius, with a ‘c’, Gaius with a ‘g’, or even Gnaeus, g-n-a-e-u-s.

But, regardless, he was a son of the house of Marcius, so his nomen, or middle name was

Marcius. Though perhaps I should pronounce that as Markius in classical LAtin.

And, finally, he became known in life as Coriolanus, which became his cognomen, due to a

certain battle that I will get to here in a moment.

Coriolanus would have been born, if he was truly born, sometime in the late 6th century,

coming to manhood in the early 5th century. Therefore, he was born during the monarchy, and

was a young defender of the equally young republic.

Plutarch reports that Coriolanus was raised by a single mother, who was a widow to some

Roman man of the house of Marcius. Plutarch quickly tells us that Coriolanus was remembered

and haled for his great deeds in life, but that the glory of his remembrance was tempered by

“the vehemence of his passion” and his “obstinate reluctance to yield or accommodate.”

And this just reinforces the idea that the Romans were less wiling than the Greeks to forgive

bad conduct in their heroes.

Achilles could pout on the beach all he wanted and Odysseus could get himself tangled in any

number of situations complicated by awkward moral choices because these men ultimately

accomplished great deeds. The Greeks forgave them their errors, indulged them, because they

atoned for their misdeeds and omissions with their heroism.

Roman heroes, though, must demonstrate dignity and humility, as well as bravery and

ingenuity. For more evidence of this, just revisit the Aeneid, and there, in the portrayal of

Aeneas, you have the perfect Roman man: brave and strong, yes, but, more importantly,

dutiful, pious, dignified.

Perhaps the defects in Coriolanus’ character derived from the very circumstances in which his

superior qualities originated. Disadvantaged by his lack of a father growing up, Coriolanus

threw himself into manhood, as if he had something to prove. As Plutarch tells us, he inured his

body to all sorts of activity and endurance. He learned to handle weapons and armor as a

young boy, outran his opponents in races, outwrestled them, and was known to be tireless and

brave, almost foolhardy, from the very start of his manhood.

Now, when Coriolanus was a young man, the exiled king Tarquin was still organizing resistance

against the new republic. Many of the realms surrounding Rome allied with this king, all of them

eager to take a local enemy down a notch, even if would just aid a foreign king to retake his

throne.And Rome’s danger cannot be understated here. At this point, the Romans controlled just three

or four hundred square miles of territory in west-central. That may sound like a lot, but it is less

than the metropolitan area of many modern major cities. In fact, they probably only controlled a

territory the size of the actual city of Rome today. This included all their farmland as well as

their urban and suburban homes and businesses. Even with iron age arms and technology, it

would not take much more than one major battlefield loss to overrun such a tiny republic.

So when young Coriolanus displayed unusual bravery in a battle versus these enemies, he was

recognized and lauded by his superiors and crowned with a garland of oak leaves, as was and

continued to be the custom in Rome for recognizing a man who had saved Roman lives.

And Coriolanus, or Marcius as he still would have been known at this time, went on to achieve

other victories and earn more trophies from the Romans, but most important of all to him, so

the legend goes, was the joy of his own mother each time she saw him crowned with another

reward for glory.

As with virtually all Roman stories from the Republican era, though, there is more to the plot of

Coriolanus’ legend than his heroic deeds. There is, as always, the class conflict. Get used to

this in reading Roman history. It almost always comes back to the warfare between the

commoners and the upper classes.

It came about, when Coriolanus was already quite famous among the Romans, that the plebs

began to agitate about their treatment, especially due to the money lenders who preyed on

them. It should be remembered that this legend dates back to before the Twelve Tables, about

which I spoke in the last episode, and a portion of the Twelve Tables was dedicated to

controlling interest rates on loans. Indeed, the class struggle in the tale of Coriolanus may be a

surviving tale of the conflicts which led to the resolution of the Twelve Tables.

Anyway, even men who had fought for Rome in its many battles were finding themselves

turned out of house and home and turned into paupers, due to money-lenders, who seem to

be always a pestilence in society, even today.

There came a time then, when the consuls called the men of Rome to assemble for yet again

another military campaign against Rome’s enemies, and the commoners simply did not show

up, leaving the consuls standing there with virtually no source of soldiery. The upper classes

could provide the cavalry but they needed heavy infantry, light troops, and many other kinds of

troops to fight a war effectively.

In fact, at this time, the plebs did not just passively resist. When they saw that the Senate was

not going to address their concerns, they seized a nearby hill top and declared that they could

go anywhere in Italy to breathe air, drink water and die, which was all they could any longer

afford to do in Rome, anyway.

Some of the more moderate men in the Senate desired to negotiate with the plebs over the

matter.

Not Coriolanus, though. He is not that kind of hero. Coriolanus was enraged with the insolence

of these plebs, and told the senate that this would lead to full-scale revolt and the resistance

must be put down at once.

Here, though, is what one of the senatorial negotiators had to say to the plebs on their hilltop

redoubt:(Read p. 177)

And the plebs accepted this reasoning, and opened negotiations which led to the senate

agreeing to the annual elections of five tribunes. This was, according to the legend, the origin

of the tribunes: elected men who would work in the government to ensure that the consuls and

the senate did not mistreat the commoners. This office of tribune would continue to evolve

over time, growing to include six and then fourteen total members at any time, with the

significance of their power increasing or decreasing depending on a variety of circumstances.

Coriolanus, for his part, wanted to show that he and his class of Roman, the patrician class,

were indeed superior to the rebellious commoners. So, in the next military campaign against

the nearby town of Corioli, he was not content to drive the enemy back into their city. Instead,

he pushed on with a few rugged volunteers, daring to fight even under the city walls where the

enemy could fire spears, darts and arrows down on him. Eventually, he and his small band

actually breached the gates and stormed the city, which was then sacked. And thus he gained

his cognomen, Coriolanus, for his taking of the city of Corioli.

Later, Coriolanus finally made his move and stood for election to the consulship. He had a

sizable following among some of the young sons of powerful men in Rome. But he was

ultimately rejected for the position of consul, probably due to his violent antipathy for the

masses.

Afterward, when a large quantity of grain arrived in Rome from various parts, including a gift

made to the Roman state by the people of Syracuse in Sicily, there was a movement to

disperse the grain equally among the people of Rome.

Coriolanus, however, would hear nothing of the kind. He characterized ancient communism this

as pandering to the masses, as something the Greeks would do, because in Greece, as he

said, “the populace is supreme.”

When the tribunes, present in the hearing before the senate, relayed this message to the plebs

outside, there was a tumult. Only just barely did the tribunes and the senators keep the entire

populace from overthrowing the state in that moment. A great and lengthy courtroom drama

ensued, in which Coriolanus was initially made to appear before the people and explain

himself, but he spoke so unapologetically and so insultingly that the tribunes sentenced him to

be thrown from the Tarpeian rock and thus fall to his death, but, after much back and forth

between upper and lower classes, and more proud words from Coriolanus, he was finally

sentenced to mere banishment.

So Coriolanus took up residence among the Volsicians, against whom he had just recently led

Roman troops on many occasions. Soon, then, being as passionate in his vengeance as he

had previously been in his loyalty to Rome, he was leading Volsician troops against Rome. He

laid waste to the countryside, seized many Roman colonies and conquered many cities allied

to Rome as well. Eventually, his army came to the very walls of Rome itself. The populace

inside those walls, both the real “people” and the commoners alike, found themselves terrified.

The Senate first sent politicians to try to sway Coriolanus, then they sent priests. But all their

appeals, to brotherhood, to the gods, were to no avail. Finally, when it seemed certain that this

former favored-son of Rome would soon lead foreign troops over the walls and destroy the city,

his mother and his wife and children were sent to see him in his war camp. He could not resist

his mother’s pleas on behalf of Rome. He broke up his camp and returned the Volsician

soldiers to their homes.In response to their salvation and the role of women in this, the Romans built statues and a

temple dedicated to Lady Fortune, about whom we will hear much more in later eras of Roman

history.

But Coriolanus himself was not fortunate. Upon returning to his new home among the

Volsicians, he was charged with treason for having let the Romans escape certain defeat. The

exiled Roman had both supporters and detractors among the Volsicians, but while they argued

the merits of his case, conspirators attacked the man in a group, in much the same way

perhaps that Julius Caesar was brought down, and they successfully assassinated him.

In the immediate aftermath of this tragedy, the Volsicians again went to war this time with one

of their own allies. The result was total defeat of their army, and the Volsicians were so

weakened by this loss that soon they became subject to Rome.

(Music)

Not long after these events, another figure of Roman history and legend comes to the forefront.

In fact, he may have been contemporary with Coriolanus, even if they were both essentially

legendary.

I speak now of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (provide real pronunciation), but he is

remembered today simply as Cincinnatus.

We learn of Cincinnatus through the Roman historian Livy rather than Plutarch. Cincinnatus

provides us with perhaps the classic example of Roman patrician virtue. Coriolanus was a

great man, but, for the Romans, he was too passionate and too ambitious. When we read the

Greek histories, men like Alcibiades and Themistocles are at least tacitly admired for their wily

ambition, but this trait was a sign of low character for the early Romans.

Now, of course, famous Roman men of later ages, like Marius and Sulla and Pompey and

Caesar, were obviously ambitious men. So, with the story of Cincinnatus I am not trying to say

that Romans were universally stoic and unambitious and coldly dignified, etc, but rather simply

that stories like this tell us something about the way that the Romans saw themselves, or what

they wished to emulate, and what they told themselves was ideal. In the same way, in Christian

societies, there are factions, and ambition and revenge and lust and greed, but the people of

those societies aspire to another model. In the same way, the Romans were as capable of base

passions, but looked to legends like that of Cincinnatus, or even Aeneas, for their inspiration.

Cincinnatus provides us with a quick and classic example of the way that Romans thought

political power should be handled. He came from a patrician family. Now, during the

tumultuous years of the fifth century, when the Republic was struggling just to survive, it was

not uncommon for the consuls to elect a dictator from among the patrician class.

I mentioned this government role in the last episode. A Roman dictator was elected to hold

supreme power for six months, basically to streamline things during a military emergency,

when senatorial discussion would take too long to meet a crisis.

As the story goes, anyway, the Roman army, sometime in the mid 5th century BC, had become

surrounded by the enemy at Mt. Elgidus in nearby Latium, and was in danger of a complete

massacre. Cincinnatus was appointed dictator to lead reinforcements to save this army. It took

just sixteen days for Cincinnatus to be nominated, assemble his forces, march to the

battlefield, defeat the enemy, save the army, and return to Rome. Upon returning home, he

immediately resigned the dictatorship.The story is made even more delightful by the following details. When the senatorial delegation

went to inform him of his election as dictator, they found the man ploughing his field. After

accepting the appointment, he had to wipe the mud off and put on formal senatorial garb

before rallying the remaining men of the city, many of them, too young or too old to have

ventured out with the first army.

And after winning the battle which saved Rome and its army, just sixteen days later,

Cincinnatus returned to Rome, resigned his post, and went back to ploughing his field.

The story presents ideal Roman virtues. Cincinnatus is brave, as any Roman man should be,

but he is not vainglorious about it. He accepts the responsibility of power in the dictatorship,

but does not use it to his own advantage. He does not, for example, try to extend his

dictatorship even one moment longer than what was required to accomplish what he was sent

to do. A weaker man, a less virtuous man, remember that virtue originally simply meant

manliness for the romans, a less virtuous man might have tried to use this power to enrich

himself or his friends, dole out favors, etc.

And then he returns to his humble work in ploughing his fields, where he grew cabbages.

However real or fictional this account might be, there is one important detail that we should

notice.

Cincinnatus was not a fan of the plebs. Virtuous as he may have been, he was not an

egalitarian. The legend tells us of how he stood against all measures in the senate that favored

the plebs.

The legend of Cincinnatus also tells us that his son was charged with actually murdering one of

the plebeians and that Cincinnatus had to sell much of his estate to pay the fine that was

leveled against the family. He moved to a smaller farm farther away from the city after this,

where he continued to plow the land and grow his cabbages.

Now, today, we see the wealthy as people far separated from the labor of their servants and

the products which give them their wealth. And, in times of war, the wealthy are the ones

pulling the strings and reaping the benefits while poor people go to die in battles which benefit

only the arms makers and the oil barons and so on.

When we look at someone like Cincinnatus, then, we might be inclined to simply see him as an

oppressor, one of the upper class who uses the plebeians, the working class, to further his own

gains.

But the thing that seems to distinguish the upper classes of the past, compared to those we

have today, is that they had skin in the game. Cincinnatus may have been rich and

domineering, but he was not afraid to share toil and danger with the people that he led. We see

this in the stories of the ancient Greeks as well. Odysseus finds his father, the former king,

living simply in the countryside at the end of the Odyssey. His wife, Penelope, the Queen, spins

her own wool. And Cincinnatus is muddy from working his fields alongside his servants and

slaves.

And when these famous, wealthy men of the past declare war, they do not send others to do

their dirty work - they share the danger and, quite often, suffer death in battle. In the Greek

series, all the heroes and leaders were often at the forefront of battles, right down to Alexander

the Great.This sharing of the troubles of life is a characteristic of the wealthy right up until the modern

age, actually. Even as recently as the US Civil War, in the 1860s, we see many generals on both

sides of the conflict running risks and dying in battle, not just sending others to die so that they

might benefit. In World War II, it was still common for sons of the wealthy, like John F. Kennedy,

to share the dangers of war with comrades from less advantaged backgrounds.

And then, something changed. The wealthy stopped sharing those dangers, stopped having,

so to speak, skin in the game. They started to benefit enormously from the labor and suffering

of others, without sharing any of the risks and troubles, Discussion of that change, in which we

see now that the ultra-wealthy are completely cocooned, preserved, from the struggles of the

common man, will appear in another series in this podcast.

So, while we may scorn a man like Cincinnatus somewhat, and quite justifiably as an elitist, we

should still admire and respect his bravery, his willingness to stand alongside plebeians and

share their work and their dangers on the battlefield, even if he stood to gain more from the

risks taken.

And understand that there is, unfortunately, more to his story than just a noble legend. This

legend tells us that Cincinnatus resigned his dictatorial powers and humbly went back to

farming cabbages. But in another account, told by the historian Dionysus, Cincinnatus used his

position as dictator to hold a trial and banish from Rome a plebeian who had merely displeased

him.

Power, the struggle for and against power, and corruption, are ever themes in this Roman story.

(Music)

Ancient historians of Rome, such as Polybius, portray the ancient Roman Republic as the very

model of order and stability. But Polybius, who was technically a diplomatic hostage during his

time in Rome, was either very enamored of Roman society or was trying to flatter his captors,

or both. So in his writings he gives us an idea of Rome which unfolds in as orderly a fashion as

the universe does in the first chapter of Genesis, one logical step after the other.

But, reading the histories of Plutarch, one can become easily confused when trying to compare

his descriptions of events and people with Polybius’ and others’ portrayal of Roman

government. For example, I have told you about the supremacy of the Senate and their

delegation of power to two consuls who were elected year by year. In times of great need, a

dictator might be elected for six months, or even less in the case of Cincinnatus.

Yet, when we come to the story of a man like Camillus, who reportedly saved Rome from being

completely erased from history after it was sacked by the Gauls in 390 BC, it is hard to see this

stratified scheme of government in place and working just as described. Camillus himself was

never once a consul, but he was dictator several times. And the story of his life seems to

portray the popularly-elected tribunes as having more de facto power than the consuls and

even the Senate itself.

Perhaps we need to accept that, for the Romans, time periods like the 5th and even the 4th

century are still “legendary” or mythological times.

Among the Greeks, in the 5th century, we already have the writings of Herodotus and

Thucydides giving us increasingly clearer, more coherent and more reliable accounts of past

events, even if they suffer from the expected human bias and lack of perspective at times. As Istated in the Greek series, we see in those documents a clear movement away from

mythological writings, gods moving among men, fables of heroes etc, and toward more

realistic portrayals of events.

Not so among the Romans, though. Perhaps this is all due to the loss of their earliest records

when the Gauls sacked Rome in 390 BC. Regardless, the fact is that when we compare the

writings and accounts that we do have of Roman events during these centuries, we get a much

more chaotic picture of how Roman society was managed in its earliest days than we would if

we just stuck with one historian.

Were the consuls in charge or the tribunes? Or maybe the censors? Were they elected or

appointed, and by whom? Just how involved was the Senate in day-to-day matters? And does

the people just mean the upper classes? Does it include the plebs or not?

No doubt, Roman society, and Roman order, was evolving during this period.

The life of the Roman hero Camillus, as described by Plutarch, will describe the last era of this

murky period in Roman history. After his life, we move more clearly toward the time of the

Punic Wars, and more detailed accounts of Roman events.

His full name, his tria nomina, was Marcus Furius Camillus. If he was a real person, he would

have been born sometime after the mid-5th century BC. According to Plutarch, he was elected

tribune at a time when the six tribunes held more power than the consuls did, being trusted

more perhaps because there were six of them rather than just two, there being such a great

fear of monarchical power among the people then.

The story of Camillus begins, sometime around the year 400 BC, with the siege of a city called

Veii. This city lay to the north of Rome. At the time, as I said before, Rome was still confined to

a small space in west-central Italy, possessing a realm not much larger now than the present

day metropolis of Rome. And the Romans were still in constant conflict with their neighbors.

But the meaning of constant warfare in the ancient world had a different meaning than it might

now. As we saw with the stories of the Greeks and the Persians, it was typical for armies to

campaign only for short periods of the year, usually during the summer when crops were

growing and required less labor. In the fall, armies would disband and the troops would return

home to harvest the crops, only to reassemble for war, if necessary, in the late spring after

planting a new crop.

The siege of Veii, however, required more dedication. The people of Veii were essentially

Tuscans, probably descended from the ancient Etruscans. They possessed a society more

ancient than that of Rome and the wealth of ages helped them to easily endure a Roman siege.

So the tribunes began to expect Roman soldiers to stay and besiege the enemy city year-

round, building forts and raising mounds to oppress and hopefully to finally break the Veiians.

This was hard on the citizen soldiers of the young republic and they grumbled about it but they

endured the sacrifices required. They were probably inspired by Camillus, who was elected

tribune more than once during the war with Veii and had reduced some other enemy cities

while the main army remained at the siege.

But during the tenth year of the war, again elected as one of the tribunes, Camillus favored a

plan to dig tunnels that led from the war camp outside the city to points directly underneath

Veii. Attacking the walls simultaneously while Roman soldiers emerged suddenly from their

secret tunnels inside the city, the Romans were finally victorious after ten long years.This victory, though, was not uncomplicated. There was controversy about how the spoils were

handled, how the soldiers behaved when they pillaged the conquered city, and Camillus was

never without his detractors even as a great part of Roman society lauded the man. In a

subsequent war with another neighboring city, Camillus accepted money from the citizens of

the enemy town in exchange for peace, and returned with the army to Rome. This angered

those soldiers who had hoped for another opportunity to loot a fallen city.

Eventually, due to this and other conflicts with the people of Rome, Camillus was sent into

exile. Leaving his wife and children behind, he removed himself from the city and sojourned

among the neighboring lands of Tuscany and Latium.

Now, sometime prior to all this, maybe during the late 5th century BC, the Gauls had expanded

into Italy. These were a Celtic peoples, Indo-European speakers, like the Romans, but from a

branch of that ancient migration that had spread into Western Europe, rather than southern

Europe, thousands of years before. Now, their former environs, the regions known today as

France and Germany, were overpopulated, and they were pouring into northern Italy by the

hundreds of thousands, their women and children and their livestock and their wagons trailing

behind them.

By the time that the Romans were capturing Veii, the Gauls were conquering and settling all of

northern Italy, even seizing control of former Tuscan areas along the Adriatic Sea. The Romans

were asked to mediate peace talks in this war, but, seeing that these talks were failing, the

Roman diplomats organized nearby Tuscan forces for an attack on the Gauls. This attack the

Gauls defeated. The Gallic leader, a man named Brennus, was enraged by the perfidy of the

Roman diplomats, who had come as ambassadors of peace only to violate their neutrality by

siding with the enemy. In the aftermath of the battle, he marched his army toward Rome.

Now, we have a tendency to portray the Gauls as classic barbarians in our heads, men dressed

in animal skins if dressed at all, swinging axes, setting everything on fire. But its clear from their

descriptions that these were men with just as much refinement as any other, and just as much

intelligence. They were not burning cities down and looting everything they came across. They

were, as does every major power in the world, using their strength, which in this case lay in

their numbers and ferocity, to better their position in the world. Thus have all great powers ever

done, no matter how “civilized” they appear.

On their march to Rome, Brennus ordered his troops to leave all of Rome’s neighbors

untouched. “We are only at war with the Romans,” he told these people, thus ensuring their

neutrality in the coming conflict, if not actually garnering their assistance.

The army that the Romans were able to muster to meet this sudden challenge was large,

perhaps 40,000 men, according to Plutarch. But they were mostly untrained conscripts with no

time to drill or prepare. The Gauls, arriving swiftly, swept them aside, and entered the city.

When the Gauls came to the Roman Forum, they found a strange sight. Here had gathered

many elderly priests and senators, those who had decided they could not bear to abandon the

city or to take refuge in the Capitol. The Capitol was the fortress on a hilltop at the center of the

city, much like the Acropolis of Athens, where survivors might rally after a breach of the city

walls. Here many inhabitants, including Camillus’ family, had taken refuge.

These old men that the Gauls found, seated and dressed in their finest robes, were completely

silent and motionless. The Gauls, Plutarch tells us, thought that perhaps they were some

exalted beings. One bold Gaul, though, approached an old senator and tugged at his beard.The enraged old man struck the soldier with his staff and, in response, the Gaul stabbed him

with his sword, killing him. Then the spirit of pillage finally took over, and the Gauls, after killing

all the senior men in the Forum, began to ransack the entire city.

They occupied the city for some seven months, besieging the many survivors who had fled to

the well-defended Capitol.

During this time, some survivors of the Roman army that had been destroyed in the field had

been holed up in Veii. They sent a messenger to Camillus, asking him to organize a new army

and retake Rome from the Gauls.

After he agreed, they sent a man by a secret path into Rome and the Capitol area, where he

told the remaining Romans of the plan. The remnant of the senate also agreed. They declared

Camillus dictator, sent the messenger back, and settled down to wait for their rescue.

It is this seven-month period in which we hear the now-famous tale of the sacred geese on the

temple grounds in the Capitol. These geese alerted the besieged survivors to an attempt by the

Gauls to use that same once-secret path, used by Camillus’ messenger, to infiltrate the Capitol

and put the Romans hold-outs to the death. The invaders were only barely turned back.

Finally, though, after seven months, half-starved and weary, and not having heard any news of

Camillus since they had elected him dictator, the Romans offered to buy their freedom from the

Gauls. The Gauls were only too willing to hear the offer, because they had been suffering the

effects of a hot summer in Rome, which even back then had already become a haven for

malaria-ridden mosquitos. The Gauls were acclimated to more northern, mountainous climes.

They were already, quite literally, sick and tired of the low lands of central Italy.

Just as the Romans were measuring out the gold before Brennus, the leader of the Gauls,

though, Camillus appeared at the head of a new army, composed of reorganized elements of

the defeated army and many allies. He defeated and destroyed the Gauls and then began to

rebuild the eternal city.

(Music)

Camillus would go on to be named both tribune and even dictator again several times in his

life.

The years after the sacking of Rome were as dramatic as any in the history of Rome. At this

time, the conflict between the commons and the patricians continued to heat up.

If you pay attention to global politics, if you know anything about the political turmoil of the last

few centuries, then you are familiar with the idea of land redistribution. Radical political

movements will state that the best solution to inequality in agricultural societies is redistribution

of the land. In more industrialized or commercial societies, the same kind of movement will

demand a more direct redistribution of wealth itself.

Already, in ancient Rome, this economic solution to inequality had occurred to political leaders.

As Camillus aged, there was a greater outcry for resolution to the ever-present inequality

between patricians and plebs. First, it was suggested that one of the two consuls elected every

year should always be chosen from among the commoners. Second, there was also political

impetus to declare it illegal that anyone should own more than 500 acres of land. Essentially,

this would result in a sort of redistribution of the land to the less wealthy, basically by seizing it

from the wealthy.Camillus was conflicted about such matters. He had always stood on the side of the patricians

in earlier class conflicts. But now, so many years later, he had fought alongside so many men,

so many plebs, who now clamored for some redress of grave economic injustice, that it was

hard for him to take sides. In the end, more severe reforms were avoided, but it became

customary for consuls to be elected at least sometimes from among the plebs, with

commoners even being called to the dictatorship in times of need.

The tribunes would also grow in number, as would their power. Their greatest stance against

the patrician senate was to to simply say Veto, I forbid, in Latin, against any senatorial decision,

and this veto would, in the words of Will Durant, bring to a grinding halt all the machinery of the

state, until the tribunes were satisfied.

In the next episode, we will transition into the era of the Middle Roman Republic, a long and

busy period of Roman history in which the Punic Wars reshape the atmosphere of the

Mediterranean and restructure the Republic itself.

Until next time, I thank you for listening to the Western Traditions podcast.

(Music)