We rejoin the Romans and the Gauls in 390 BCE at the place where the Tiber river intersects with the Alia river. Turns out that when a bunch of Fabians upset the Gauls, those Gauls decide to march south towards Rome… How many Gauls and how many Romans met at the rivers’ edge? Well, the numbers are probably unreliable but the Romans are pretty sure they are outnumbered.

The Battle at the Alia

There seems to be a few issues at this moment including the Roman failure to build a proper camp and – even worse – failure to take the auspices. Is this some foreshadowing from our friend Livy?

Stay tuned for a discussion of the slim layout of the Roman forces. Brennus, the putative leader of the Gauls, seems concerned that there may be some secret tactic or force that he hasn’t been able to account for. There’s also the problem of which bank of the river the battle takes place on which may influence where Roman forces end up.

Will the Romans take the day or will they flail in the face of the Gallic strength? Are there some tactics involved that scholars can discern from the literary accounts that aren’t immediately obvious?

The Roman Retreat

When the day goes against Rome, the retreat seems to be chaotic. Some of the Romans retreat to Rome, which makes sense, and some retreat to Veii. This creates a host of uncertainty for the Romans who survive particularly those who head back to Rome and don’t find their comrades there. The assumption of Roman losses is significant.

The Gauls meanwhile continue to suspect that there is a surprise attack from the Romans coming, but after some time they decide it’s worth marching on Rome just to see what they can see.

Things to Listen Out for:

• Gauls getting ‘organised’ after Alia





• General Akbar and the Gauls coming together





• The role of the citadel on the Capitoline Hill





• The Gauls confused about Rome – the city?





• How does the levy of the Roman army work in this moment?





• The Vestal Virgins on the move!





• What happens to the eldest noble Romans now the Gauls are at the gates?





• Lucius Albinus – ’the noble Plebeian’?

Our Players 390 BCE

MILITARY TRIBUNES WITH CONSULAR POWER

• Quintus Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat) – Interreges in 391





• Kaeso Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat) Previously Military Tribune with Consular Power in 404, 401; interreges in 391





• Numerius Fabius M. f. Q. n. Ambustus (Pat) Previously military tribune in 406.





• Quintus Sulpicius – f. – n. Longus (Pat)





• Quintus Servilius Q. f. P. n. Fidenas (Pat). Previously military tribune in 402, 398, 395.





• Publius Cornelius P. f. M. n. Maluginensis (Pat) Previously consul in 393 and Military tribune in 397

DICTATOR

• M. Furius L. f. Sp. n. Camillus (Pat). Previously military tribune 401, 398, 394.

MASTER OF THE HORSE

• Lucius Valerius (L. f. L. n. Poplicola) (Pat) – Previously military tribune in 394 OR





• Lucius Valerius (L. f. P. n. Potitus) (Pat) – Consul in 393, 392; military tribune in 414, 406, 403 , 401, and 398.

PONTIFICES

• Marcus Folius (Flaccinator?) (Pat)





• Gaius OR Kaeso Fabius Dorsuo (Pat)

AUGUR / PONTIFEX

• Quintus? Servilius P. f. (Sp. n. Priscus OR Structus Fidenas) (served from 439-390)





• Succeeded by [- – – – Furi]us Q. f. P. n. Fusus – Military tribune 403. (CIL 6.37161; ILS 9338.2)

OTHER NOTABLES

• Quintus Caedicius (commanding Roman forces at Veii)





• Brennus(?) – King of the Senones Gauls





• Cominius Pontius – A Roman with the forces in Veii





• Marcus Manlius (or Marcus Mallius) (on the Capitoline during the siege)

Our Sources

• Dr Rad reads Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 5.34-39.





• Dr G reads Aulus Gellius 17.2.14; Aurelius Victor, De virus illustribus 23; Diodorus Siculus, 14.110.1; 15.20.1; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 13.6-12; Eutropius, 1.20; Fasti Capitolini; Festus 500L; Florus 1.7-8; Orosius 2.19.1-16; Pliny the Elder Natural Histories 33.16; Plutarch, Life of Camillus, 22.4-32; Plutarch De fortuna Romanorum 12, 324e-f.





• Bernard, Seth. “Rome from the Sack of Veii to the Gallic Sack.” In Building Mid-Republican Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190878788.003.0003.





• Bradley, G. 2020. Early Rome to 290 BC (Edinburgh University Press).





• Broughton, T. R. S., Patterson, M. L. 1951. The Magistrates of the Roman Republic Volume 1: 509 B.C. – 100 B.C. (The American Philological Association)





• Bruun, Patrick. “Evocatio Deorum: Some Notes on the Romanization of Etruria.” Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 6 (1972): 109–20. https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67073.





• Cornell, T. J. 1995. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC) (Taylor & Francis) Forsythe, G. 2006. A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War (University of California Press) 





• Digital Prosopography of the Roman Republic – https://romanrepublic.ac.uk/





• Duff, T. E. 2010. ‘Plutarch’s Themistocles and Camillus’. In N. Humble, ed., Plutarch’s Lives: parallelism and purpose (Classical Press of Wales: Swansea, 2010), pp. 45-86.





• Eder, W. (. (2006). Triumph, Triumphal procession. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e1221100 





• Elvers, K. (., Courtney, E. (. V., Richmond, J. A. (. V., Eder, W. (., Giaro, T. (., Eck, W. (., & Franke, T. (. (2006). Furius. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e416550





• Gowing, Alain M. 2009. “The Roman exempla tradition in imperial Greek historiography: The case of Camillus in Feldherr, A., ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.





• Graf, F. (. O., & Ley, A. (. (2006). Iuno. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e603690





• Kraus, C. S. 2020. ‘Urban Disasters and Other Romes: The Case of Veii’ in Closs, V. M., Keitel, E. eds. Urban Disasters and the Roman Imagination (De Gruyter), 17-31.





• Lomas, Kathryn (2018). The rise of Rome. History of the Ancient World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674919938. ISBN978-0-674-65965-0. S2CID239349186.





• Ogilvie, R. M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy: Books 1-5 (Clarendon Press). 





• Prescendi, F. (. (2006). Mater Matuta. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e726220





• Raaflaub, K. A. 2006. Social struggles in archaic Rome: new perspectives on the conflict of the orders (2^nd ed). (Wiley).





• Smith, Christopher, Jacopo Tabolli, and Orlando Cerasuolo. “Furius Camillus and Veii.” In Veii, 217–24. New York, USA: University of Texas Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.7560/317259-030.





• Stevenson, T.R. “Parens Patriae and Livy’s Camillus.” Ramus 29, no. 1 (2000): 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048671X00001673.





• Versnel, H. S. (. (2006). Evocatio. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e407670

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img alt="The Dying Gaul, also called The Dying Galatian or The Dying Gladiator, is an ancient Roman marble semi-recumbent statue now in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. It is a copy of a now lost Greek sculpture from the Hellenistic period (323–31 BCE) thought to have been made in bronze" class="wp-image