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 there was scarcely any trace of hostility or even contact
between them and the Romans. But at the beginning of the third century
before our era, the coalition of the Samnites and Etruscans against Rome
was near its climax; they eagerly pressed the Gauls to join, and the
latter assented easily. Then commenced the second period of struggles
between the two peoples. Rome had taken breath, and had grown much more
rapidly than her rivals. Instead of shutting herself up, as heretofore,
within her walls, she forthwith raised three armies, took the offensive
against the coalitionists, and carried the war into their territory. The
Etruscans rushed to the defence of their hearths. The two consuls,
Fabius and Decius, immediately attacked the Samnites and Gauls at the