roofs were level with the floor of the Capitol.  It is uncertain whether the buildings at this point were fired by the assailants or—­as tradition prefers—­by the besieged in trying to dislodge their enemies who had struggled up so far.  The fire spread to the colonnades adjoining the temples, and then the ’eagles’[190] supporting the roof, which were made of very old wood, caught the flames and fed them.  And so the Capitol, with its doors fast shut, undefended and unplundered, was burnt to the ground.

Since the foundation of the city no such deplorable and horrible 72 disaster had ever befallen the people of Rome.  It was no case of foreign invasion.  Had our own wickedness allowed, the country might have been enjoying the blessings of a benign Providence; and yet here was the seat of Jupiter Almighty—­the temple solemnly founded by our ancestors as the pledge of their imperial greatness, on which not even Porsenna,[191] when Rome surrendered, nor the Gauls, when they took it, had ever dared to lay rash hands—­being brought utterly to ruin by the mad folly of two rival emperors![192] The Capitol had been burnt before in civil war,[193] but that was the crime of private persons.  Now it had been openly assaulted by the people of Rome and openly burnt by them.  And what was the cause of war? what the recompense for such a disaster?  Were we fighting for our country?

King Tarquinius Priscus had vowed to build this temple in the Sabine war, and had laid the foundations on a scale that suited rather his hope of the city’s future greatness than the still moderate fortunes of the Roman people.  Later Servius Tullius, with the aid of Rome’s allies, and Tarquinius Superbus, with the spoils of the Volscians after the capture of Suessa Pometia,[194] continued the building.  But the glory of completing it was reserved for the days of freedom.  After the expulsion of the kings, Horatius Pulvillus, in his second consulship[195] dedicated this monument on such a magnificent scale, that in later days, with all her boundless wealth, Rome has been able to embellish but never to enlarge it.  After an interval of four hundred and fifteen years, in the consulship of Lucius Scipio and Caius Norbanus,[196] it was burnt and rebuilt on the same site.  Sulla after his victory undertook the task of restoring it, but did not dedicate it.  This only was lacking to justify his title of ’Fortune’s Favourite’.[197] Much as the emperors did to it, the name of Lutatius Catulus[198] still remained upon it up to the time of Vitellius.[199] This was the temple that was now ablaze.

The besieged suffered more panic than their assailants.  The 73 Vitellian soldiers lacked neither resource nor steadiness in moments of crisis.  But on the other side the troops were terrified, the general[200] inert, and apparently so paralysed that he was practically deaf and dumb.  He neither adopted others’ plans nor formed any of his own, but only drifted about from place to place, attracted