Camillus

Accordingly, Camillus decided that the question should be debated and settled in council. He himself spoke at great length, in exhortation to preserve their common country, and every one else who wished did likewise. Finally, he called upon Lucius Lucretius, to whom custom gave the first vote, and bade him declare his opinion first, and then the other senators in the order due.

Silence fell, and Lucretius was on the point of beginning, when it chanced that a centurion with a squad of the day watch passed by outside, and calling with a loud voice on the man who led with the standard, bade him halt and plant his standard there, for that was the best place to settle down and stay in. The utterance fell at the crisis of their anxious thought for the uncertain future, and Lucretius said, with a devout obeisance, that he cast his vote with the god. The rest, one by one, followed his example.

Then the inclinations of the multitude were marvellously changed. They exhorted and incited one another to the work, and pitched upon their several sites, not by any orderly assignment, but as each man found it convenient and desirable. Therefore the city was rebuilt with confused and narrow streets and a maze of houses, owing to their haste and speed. Within a year’s time, it is said, a new city had arisen, with walls to guard it and homes in which to dwell.

Those who had been deputed by Camillus to recover and mark out anew the sacred places, found them all in utter confusion. When they came to the shrine of Mars, in their circuit of the Palatium, they found that it had been demolished and burnt by the Barbarians, like the rest, but as they were clearing away and renovating the place, they came upon the augural staff of Romulus, buried deep in a great heap of ashes.

The augural staff is curved at one end, and is called lituus. It is used to mark off the different quarters of the heavens, in the ceremonies of divination by the flight of birds, and so Romulus had used this one, for he was a great diviner. But when he vanished from among men, the priests took this staff and kept it inviolate, like any other sacred object. Their finding this at that time unscathed, when all the rest had perished, gave them more pleasing hopes for Rome. They thought it a token that assured her of everlasting safety.

They were not yet done with these pressing tasks when a fresh war broke upon them. The Aequians, Volscians, and Latins burst into their territory all at once, and the Tuscans laid siege to Sutrium, a city allied with Rome. The military tribunes in command of the army, having encamped near Mount Marcius, were besieged by the Latins, and were in danger of losing their camp. Wherefore they sent to Rome for aid, and Camillus was appointed dictator for the third time.

Two stories are told about this war, and I will give the fabulous one first. They say that the Latins, either as a pretext for war, or because they really wished to revive the ancient affinity between the two peoples, sent and demanded from the Romans freeborn virgins in marriage. The Romans were in doubt what to do, for they dreaded war in their unsettled and unrestored condition, and yet they suspected that this demand for wives was really a call for hostages disguised under the specious name of intermarriage.