were really cut off by the people of Cære, or some neighboring place,
and, to improve the story, it was at first said that they were the very
ones that had taken Rome. Then, another writer added, that the gold
given as a ransom for the city was retaken with the captives; and, as
another improvement, it was said that Camillus was the one who
accomplished the feat, but that it was a long time afterwards, when the
Gauls were besieging another city. The last step in adding to the story
was taken when some one, thinking that it could be improved still more,
and the national pride satisfied, brought Camillus into the city at the
very moment that the gold was in the scales, so that he could keep it
from being delivered at all, and then proceed to cut off all the enemy,
so that not a man should be left to take the terrible tale back over
the northern mountains! The story is not all false, for there are good
evidences that Rome was burned, but the heroic embellishments are
doubtless the imaginative and patriotic additions of historians who
thought more of national pride than historic accuracy.

Camillus now proceeded to rebuild the city, and came to be honored as
the second founder of Rome. The suffering people rushed out of the
capitol weeping for very joy; the inhabitants who had gone elsewhere
came back; the priests brought the holy things from their hiding-
places; the city was purified; a temple was speedily erected to Rumor
or Voice on the spot where Cædicius had heard the voice announcing the
coming barbarians; and there was a diligent digging among the ashes to
find the sites of the other temples and streets. It was a tedious and
almost hopeless task to rebuild the broken-down city, and the people
began to look with longing to the strongly-built houses and temples
still standing at Veii, wondering why they might not go thither in a
body and live in comfort, instead of digging among ashes to rebuild a
city simply to give Camillus, of whom they quickly began to be jealous,