During this second period Rome was more than once in danger.  In the year 283 B.C. the Gauls destroyed one of her armies near Aretium (Arezzo), and advanced to the Roman frontier, saying, “We are bound for Rome; the Gauls know how to take it.”  Seventy-two years afterwards the Cisalpine Gauls swore they would not put off their baldricks till they had mounted the Capitol, and they arrived within three days’ march of Rome.  At every appearance of this formidable enemy the alarm at Rome was great.  The senate raised all its forces and summoned its allies.  The people demanded a consultation of the Sibylline books, sacred volumes sold, it was said, to Tarquinius Priscus by the sibyl Amalthea, and containing the secret of the destinies of the Republic.  They were actually opened in the year 228 B.C., and it was with terror found that the Gauls would twice take possession of the soil of Rome.  On the advice of the priests, there was dug within the city, in the middle of the cattle-market, a huge pit, in which two Gauls, a man and a woman, were entombed alive; for thus they took possession of the soil of Rome, the oracle was fulfilled, and the mishap averted.  Thirteen years afterwards, on occasion of the disaster at Cann, the same atrocity was again committed, at the same place and for the same cause.  And by a strange contrast, there was at the committing of this barbarous act, “which was against Roman usage,” says Livy, a secret feeling of horror, for, to appease the manes of the victims, a sacrifice was instituted, which was celebrated every year at the pit, in the month of November.

In spite of sometimes urgent peril, in spite of popular alarms, Rome, during the course of this period, from 299 to 258 B.C., maintained an increasing ascendency over the Gauls.  She always cleared them off her territory, several times ravaged theirs, on the two banks of the Po,—­ called respectively Transpadan and Cispadan Gaul, and gained the majority of the great battles she had to fight.  Finally in the year 283 B.C., the proprietor Drusus, after having ravaged the country of the Senonic Gauls, carried off the very ingots and jewels, it was said, which had been given to their ancestors as the price of their retreat.  Solemn proclamation was made that the ransom of the Capitol had returned within its walls; and, sixty years afterwards, the Consul M. Cl.  Marcellus, having defeated at Clastidium a numerous army of Gauls, and with his own hand slain their general, Virdumar, had the honor of dedicating to the temple of Jupiter the third “grand spoils” taken since the foundation of Rome, and of ascending the Capitol, himself conveying the armor of Virdumar, for he had got hewn an oaken trunk, round which he had arranged the helmet, tunic, and breastplate of the barbarian king.