[Illustration:  The Gauls in Rome——­39]

The Roman historians have done no more than justice in extolling the saviors of Rome.  But their memory would have suffered no loss had the whole truth been made known; and the claims of national vanity are not of the same weight as the duty one owes to truth.  Now, it is certain that Camillus did not gain such decisive advantages over the Gauls as the Roman accounts would lead one to believe, and that the deliverance of Rome was much less complete.  On the 13th of February, 389 B.C., the Gauls, it is true, allowed their retreat to be purchased by the Romans; and they experienced, as they retired, certain checks, whereby they lost a part of their booty.  But twenty-three years afterwards they are found in Latium scouring in every direction the outlying country of Rome, without the Romans daring to go out and fight them.  It was only at the end of five years, in the year 361 B.C., that, the very city being menaced anew, the legions marched out to meet the enemy.  “Surprised at this audacity,” says Polybius, “the Gauls fell back, but merely a few leagues from Rome, to the environs of Tibur; and thence, for the space of twelve years, they attacked the Roman territory, renewing the campaign every year, often reaching the very gates of the city, and being repulsed indeed, but never farther than Tibur and its slopes.”  Rome, however, made great efforts, every war with the Gauls was previously proclaimed a tumult, which involved a levy in mass of the citizens, without any exemption, even for old men and priests.  A treasure, specially dedicated to Gallic wars, was laid by in the Capitol, and religious denunciations of the most awful kind hung over the head of whoever should dare to touch it, no matter what the exigency might be.  To this epoch belonged those marvels of daring recorded in Roman tradition, those acts of heroism tinged with fable, which are met with amongst so many peoples, either in their earliest age, or in their days of great peril.  In the year 361 B.C., Titus Manlius, son of him who had saved the Capitol from the night attack of the Gauls, and twelve years later M. Valerius, a young military tribune, were, it will be remembered, the two Roman heroes who vanquished in single combat the two Gallic giants who insolently defied Rome.  The gratitude towards them was general and of long duration, for two centuries afterwards (in the year 167 B.C.) the head of the Gaul with his tongue out still appeared at Rome, above the shop of a money-changer, on a circular sign-board, called “the Kymrian shield” (scutum Cimbricum).  After seventeen years’ stay in Latium, the Gauls at last withdrew, and returned to their adopted country in those lovely valleys of the Po which already bore the name of Cisalpine Gaul.  They began to get disgusted with a wandering life.  Their population multiplied; their towns spread; their fields were better cultivated; their manners became less barbarous.  For fifty years