Marcus Furius Camillus is an ancient Roman that it is hard to ignore, especially in the early days of the 4th century BCE. He has been regularly popping up in our episodes from the era, so we thought it would be wonderful to invite on a special guest to discuss his whole life in one handy biographic episode.
Who is Marc Hyden?
Marc Hyden is the Director of State Government Affairs at a Washington DC-based think tank, as well as being a weekly columnist for the Newnan Times-Herald, Albany Herald, and Rome News-Tribune. Marc graduated from Georgia State University with a degree in philosophy.
Marc has authored many, many books on Ancient Rome. His most recent work is Emperor Titus: The Right Hand of Vespasian (McFarland, 2025), and we will be talking with him about that in a future episode. He has also authored Gaius Marius: The Rise and Fall of Rome’s Saviour (Pen & Sword, 2017), Romulus: The Legend of Rome’s Founding Father (Pen & Sword, 2020), but our focus today is going to be on Marcus Furius Camillus: The Life of Rome’s Second Founder (Pen & Sword, 2023).
Things to Listen Out For:
- Camillus’ controversies
- Camillus’ rise to fame
- The many virtues of Camillus
- The legacy of this Roman hero
We are sure you will love hearing Marc talk about Camillus, the man who served as a role model for later Roman luminaries like Julius Caesar and Augustus.
If you would like to hear more, we have a stack of episodes in our back catalogue that feature Camillus.
Sound Credits
Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.
Automated Transcript
Dr Rad 0:15
Welcome to the partial historians.
Dr G 0:19
We explore all the details of ancient Rome,
Dr Rad 0:23
everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles waged and when citizens turn against each other, I’m Dr rad,
Dr G 0:33
and I’m Dr G, we consider Rome as the Romans saw it, by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories.
Dr Rad 0:44
Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.
Dr Rad 0:55
Hello and welcome to a special episode of the partial historians, I am one of your hosts. Dr rad, and I am, Dr G, now. Dr G, we have been basically hosting the Camillus show for a good many episodes now. And so it is with great pleasure that we welcome on our next guest, Marc Hyden. Marc Hyden is the Director of State Government Affairs at a Washington DC based think tank, as well as being a weekly columnist for The Newnan Times, Herald, Albany Herald and Rome News-Tribune. Marc graduated from Georgia State University with a degree in philosophy. Marc shares a love for ancient Rome, and has published numerous books on the subject. His most recent work is Emperor Titus: The Right Hand of Vespasian, which came out with MacFarland in 2025 and we will be talking with him about that in a future episode. He has also authored Gaius Marius: The Rise and Fall of Rome’s Savior with Pen and Sword in 2017, Romulus, The Legend of Rome’s Founding Father with Pen and Sword in 2020 but our focus today is going to be on Marcus Furius Camillus, the life of Rome’s second founder, which came out with Pen and Sword in 2023 and so I’m sure everyone is cheering right now because they want to hear much, much more about Camillus than we have ever told them. Welcome Marc!
Marc Hyden 2:28
Hey, thanks so much for having me, and I’m glad I can find some other people that I can nerd out with about Camillus.
Dr Rad 2:34
You are indeed in the right location, all right. Well, let’s kick it off with some general questions. We know that family is very important in ancient Rome. Can you please tell us a bit about Camillus’ family and background?
Marc Hyden 2:51
Sure, and you know, I started writing the book about Camillus at the beginning of the pandemic, and I was trying. I thought I would write this book chronologically, which is what I did. I decided to try to figure out start off with, well, essentially, who was his father and his grandfather? That’s kind of how these things work. And unfortunately, his whole family, more than a generation or so before him, there’s not really much known. We do know that he hailed from a patrician family, the gens Furii, and judging by some of the members names and some epigraphic evidence, they were probably of Latin stock, and they had roots in the cities of Tusculum and Medulia, not too far from Rome. However, they wouldn’t have been originally Roman from the Romans eyes. They were they were Latin. They were a little bit different, but eventually they were incorporated into the early republic. And actually they might have been incorporated even in under the monarchy. But initially, the Furii they they weren’t really that influential, at least compared to some of the other clans. I mean, we think about the great clans like the Fabii, who seemed to like have a stranglehold on early and even later part portions of the Republic. But in spite of this, the fury, they clearly did enjoy some sway in old Rome, beginning about a generation before Camillus was born. And we know this. We can see from the Fasti Capitolini and from some other evidence, I believe that the first person in his family to gain prominence with Sextus Furius. So he was a consul at some point in 488, BC, most likely, although Varronian dating is off, you know, that might have been off by at least three years or so, but he became one of Rome’s two consuls. And he was probably a direct ancestor of Camillus, or at least somehow related to him. But after he came to power then, then other people start in his family started to ascend to the pinnacle of elected Roman politics, and by the mid fifth century BC, Camillus was born into this increasingly ascendant family. And that brings me back to trying to figure out who the heck was his father and his grandfather. Father, because Livy doesn’t mention this. Plutarch doesn’t mention this. No one mentions this. So I started looking at the inscriptions from the Fasti Capitolini, and within it, it, you know, it has his name, Marcus Furius Camillus. And then there’s these weird abbreviations in there. What those abbreviations are? They tell you the shorthand of what his grandfather and his father’s name was so we know that his grandfather was Spurius, and his father was Lucius. So with that, we can deduce that his grandfather is probably Spurius, Spurius Medullinus Fusus, who happened to be consul in 464, BC. And his father was Lucius Furius Medullinus, and he served as a consular Tribune a few times after Camillus birth,
Dr G 5:45
you’re setting us up really nicely, because Spurius Furius is one of our favorite Romans of the early republic in all of his iterations, because there were a few Spurius Furii. But to know that Camillus might be related into that line as well. Well, well, it warms the heart. It makes so much sense to us as fans, thinking about when Camillus starts to rise to prominence. Can you tell us a little bit about how his early career starts to take off?
Marc Hyden 6:15
Yeah, much like his family, there’s not a whole lot known about Camillus in his early life, we know kind of the first big thing we hear about him is that at a young age, probably around 15 or 16 years old, he served in the cavalry during the Battle of Mount Algidus, which pitted the Romans against the Aequians and the Volscians. These these generational enemies that your listeners are very familiar with. And during this, this pivotal battle, the teenager, unlike what I would have been like at that age, he rode out beyond the Roman infantry’s line, and he engaged the Republic’s foes, and he had a bolt, an arrow, some sort of projectile, fired at him and it lodged in his leg. And despite it being stuck in there, and he’s probably suffering from blood loss, he urges his his steed forward and fights. He the enemy with distinction. And you know, all of his his colleagues saw this. They thought it was they thought it was excellent. They ended up winning the battle. And you know, he might have contributed to that as well, but he earned a name for his bravado, and he got plaudits back in Rome. But unfortunately, after he goes back to Rome and he has he gets to go enjoy a triumph with the dictator who won the battle of Mount Algidus. Nothing, there’s like a dark age for Camillus. The next 27 or so years, we don’t know a thing about him. We can glean some stuff. You know, he probably we he would have gotten married, and we know that he had kids, at least two boys, and he may have had many, many girls as well. And he probably worked on the family business, managing some farms and that sort of thing. But eventually he decided to follow his family’s footsteps and enter the political world. And this is, this is a kind of a mystery to me, and I’m sure it is to you, because the first office that we know of they decided to run for was the censorship. So the censorship was, was relatively new by this age. It had only been around for about a generation, but throughout much of Rome’s history afterward, the censorship was something that was a crowning achievement after a long, long career, a very successful career, not something you’re going to give some upstart freshmen. Somehow he, at least, according to the ancient accounts, he he succeeds. He’s one of Rome’s two censors, and he serves probably around 403 to 402 BC. And during that period, he did some for modernize, some some weird things. He worked to raise taxes by ensuring that orphans couldn’t get out of paying them, which sounds really, really terrible, but really he was probably, probably had to do with inheritance for very rich orphans whose parents had passed away, not poverty stricken ones. And he also worked to ensure that bachelors either paid a fine or married widows, because with all the plagues and all the wars, there were a lot of single women out there that were probably struggling to make ends meet, and he encouraged them to get married. And then afterward, after having what that was viewed as a very successful censorship, he decided to serve the state in some other ways, and he eyed the consular tribuneship. This is a very weird quirk of Roman politics, because we’ve already talked about the consuls. There’s two consuls that supposedly headed up the government in normal times, but then periodically in this era, there were no consuls. So the ancient writers suggest that since the plebeians at the time could not hold the consulship. They’d obstruct the government and force them to appoint people other than consul so they would do consular Tribune ships or tribunes and plebeians could hold that as well as patricians, and that was supposedly the genesis of it. But there’s been some modern debate. One academic suggests that consular tri. Tribunes weren’t even an official position. They were actually war band leaders that the ancient writers misinterpreted. Meanwhile, others disagree, and they believe that they were actually a real position that was elected by the Roman populace. But the reason that they opted for tribunes rather than consuls is that you could have four, six, maybe even eight consular tribunes that serve at the same time. So you could fight a lot of wars, you could manage a lot of problems, a lot more than you could with only two consoles. And at this time, Rome was surrounded by enemies, or at least potential enemies. They had so many problems, so they were they were willing to kind of bend the rules and have consular tribunes lead them. So Camillus, after that long digression, Camillus decides he wants to run for this. And he wins a term in 401, and in 398, and immediately he’s put to the test. He He wages kind of a scorched earth campaign, first against the capitanis and then the filiscans, who are both allies, frenemies, something like that, with with Rome’s really serious foe, Veii and his he was successful. I mean, there was no major, major turning points in those but he waged a scorched earth campaign that really left them in pain, and this gave him the chance to propel within Roman society and eventually become a Roman hero.
Dr Rad 11:23
Yes, let’s talk more about his reputation as a Roman hero. There are a few moments that have started to emerge in our episodes that seem to put Camillus in the limelight. So can you tell us a bit about these times in his life which seemed to cement his reputation as a Roman hero, yeah,
Marc Hyden 11:41
I’d love to so around the time that he wraps up his his second consular tribuneship, Rome has been mired in this long siege of the eye. They just this is this settlement that really was kind of the counter to Rome. They were Etruscan. It was built on this big, craggy mount, and it was very well fortified, and they had been fighting each other, supposedly since the days of Romulus. They these guys just did not like each other. But over the years, Rome slowly had started to outperform Veii and really everything tended to center generally around the city of Fidenae because of the control of a lot of different routes, communication lines and that sort of thing. Rome, at this point, they were really ready to smite their foe and just be done with it for years to come. But it wasn’t going well. They kept having embarrassing mishaps happening on the front and after about 10 years of the siege, and we’ll talk about later on, about how the siege probably didn’t actually last 10 years. But according to the ancient accounts, it lasted 10 years. It wasn’t going well. Rome decided we’ve got to just name a dictator, the dictators of today’s era. I mean, it’s, it’s a scary, very bad thing. No one wants a dictator. Back then, it wasn’t considered a bad thing. It was. It was a term of no more than six months, and they appointed someone in times of emergency so they could control the city state’s resources and focus it all on the main issue, which was vi so they appointed Camillus to do that, and he performed ably. And instead of using the same tactics that had not been working there, he decided to undermine the city. So he had these mines cleaved underneath. And while that was going on, they scaled the walls, opened the gates, and VI fell. And in fact, supposedly, you can still find some of the mines or drainage pipes that Camillus and his troops might have used today in the vicinity, which is pretty exciting for a big nerd like me. So he has the success there. It’s a very big success, but it causes him serious grief later in his life, not too much later, but we’ll get to that in a little bit his next moment that really cements him as a Roman hero comes in 394, BC. So at this point, Camillus is once again serving as a consular Tribune. And as you’ve talked about on on your podcast before, he was charged with eliminating Falerii as a threat. So he battled them. He hems them into into the city, and he begins to lay siege. And as your listeners know, Faliscan schoolmaster, you know, he’s got all these these noble children under his tutelage. He teaches them reading, writing, arithmetic and whatnot, and also lets them exercise. So every day he takes them out of the city walls, and each day gets a little bit closer to the Roman sentinels, until he’s able to finally hand these children over to Camillus. And he tells them, hey, you know, this is a great opportunity. You can take these children, use them as hostages, pawns of war, and bring the city to their knees. And the schoolmaster probably thought that he was going to get recompense. And rewarded for, for this, this terrible act. Well, instead of it working out, it really ticks off Camillus, like he’s a man of integrity, at least we’re told that he is. So he has the man stripped of his clothing, has him flogged, and, you know, in it just weird Roman form, gives all these children canes to just beat this poor man senseless as they march back to Falerii, where everyone’s watching in kind of disbelief, and they’re like, gosh, you know, this Camillus guy could have used these children against us, but he chose not to. He’s a man of honor. Rome must be a city state of honor. We’re going to be at peace. So it ends bloodlessly, and they become friends, supposedly, and that is one of the that it’s the second and a very large episode in which it really cements his his legacy. Now the last major episode comes later, and we’re talking about Rome sacking the most one of the most embarrassing and humiliating moments in the record, although there’s a canonical view, and then there’s the view of what really happened, and we can get to the reality a little bit later. But according to legend around 390 BC, this is veronian dating again in Livy, a band of Gauls known as the Senones, and were led by Brennus, King Brennus, and they defeated the Romans at the river Alia, sacked Rome, with the exception of the capitolin Hill, and then laid siege to it. They’re unable to capture it, because barbarians, of course, don’t know how to do things. So they can just, they can just make people’s lives miserable. And eventually they say, hey, we’ll leave. Give us 1000 pounds of gold. No big deal. The Romans, eventually they agree, we’ll give you 1000 pounds. They start carting it down, and the Gauls are weighing it to make sure they have enough, but they’ve actually rigged the scales so that they can get more than 1000 pounds. And the Romans, they get wise to this, and they figure it out. And when they complain. There’s the famous moment where Brennus walks up to the weighing plate and throws his sword on it. And when the Romans asked, What does this mean? He, you know, exclaims, Vae victis, or Woe to the vanquished. So while all this is going on, Camillus is living in exile. And we can we’ll talk a little later about why he’s in exile and he is appointed dictator in absentia. At first they asked him to take, take control the troops that were around Rome’s vicinity. He refuses to do it, but they they appoint him. He refuses to do it because it would be inappropriate at first, because he didn’t have the statutory power. So once they appointed him formally dictator, he takes the troops, eventually marches back into Rome, and he sees this exchange with gold, and he’s he’s furious, and he explains to Brennus, in uncertain, no uncertain terms, that he’s dictator, he’s Supreme Leader. This is not a real agreement, because he would never agree to it. And then they start to battle. He pushes them out of Rome, and then the next day, at the near the eighth milestone, they had wage a big battle. And at that point, Camillus destroys the barbarian threat and collects a lot of the gold, or at least the canonical account suggests that. So the last major episode that really lifts Camillus into being this demigod, really for Romans, is the reversal of the Senones at Rome.
Speaker 1 18:27
It’s such a big moment as well, very dramatically told in Livy and some of our other ancient sources. And I do really enjoy this idea that Camillus is furious at Brennus, because that ties in very nicely with the gens as well. So Camillus has these moments of glory. They’re pretty significant, significant enough that Romans continue to talk about them centuries later. But you’ve already hinted at the idea that there are some things that don’t go so well for Camillus. And you noted that he’s actually in exile in the lead up to this sack by the Gauls. Can you speak to some of the more controversial things that are going on with Camillus?
Marc Hyden 19:14
Yeah, and it seems, it seems bizarre that this exempla of Roman virtue is somehow embroiled in any controversy. But there’s, like, there’s several moments, so there’s quite there’s a bit of a laundry list. So bear with me. But after sacking Veii Camillus is awarded a triumph. And you know, he’s He’s excited. This is a celebratory parade through Rome that everybody wants it. Children probably dream of getting this. And he gets it, and he wants it to be pretty fancy. So, you know, he gets dressed up, most likely, as paints his face red and makes him look like Jupiter, and even secures four white horses to pull his his triumphal carriage to modernize. That’s who cares. That’s a big shrug to the road. Romans. This was symbolism the four white horses. No one had ever done this before in Rome, supposedly, and to them, this was symbolism that was more appropriate for for the gods, as opposed to a man. So he, he goes through, you know, down the via sacrum snakes the Rome, and he probably sees all these lawn lookers recoiling at his impious display. So that causes a lot of grief for what now is seems like a very minor infraction, especially when you consider what later emperors like Nero are up to my goodness, this is, this is a nothing burger. But this wasn’t the only controversy. There’s several stemming from Veii’s fall Camillus, while he was the sacking was underway or getting ready to he pledged that he would donate a 10th of the spoils to Apollo, the god Apollo. Unfortunately, he didn’t really define what the spoils were or how the tithe would get collected. And what really made collecting this tithe so difficult is that immediately after the sack, the Senate, along with Camille, has decided, you know, we’re just going to let the people go and take whatever spoils they want. We’re nice guys like that. Just take whatever you want from this poor city that we have just ravaged. So you have all these people living in poverty, that their lives might be slightly better because they got a gold bowl or a gold cup or something silver that they were able to take from Veii well, they start witnessing these portents that perhaps the gods are pretty angry that this tithe has not been paid. So, you know, priests, the Senate, Camillus, they start talking, they they realize they really shouldn’t have reneged on on their on camillius Promise. It was solemn, it was inviolable, and they needed to deliver it. So they kind of mulled over ways of trying to do this, and they settled on telling the people that they had to voluntarily donate 10% of whatever they took from the city. Well, this ticked a lot of people off. I mean, they recently had a windfall. Some of them may have already spent it, you know, buying land, buying tools or whatever, and now they had to somehow find a way to donate a 10th of it. Supposedly, everyone did it. So good for Camillus, you know, his pledge was ultimately fulfilled. But you can imagine how angry the populace was. You know this, this guy had come in and his four white horses acting like a god, and now he told me that I gotta give back 10% of of what I’ve got recently.
Marc Hyden 22:30
So rude. How do you give back 10% of a gold bowl? You had to chip part
Marc Hyden 22:31
You had to chip part of it off, I guess, I’m not quite sure. So this, this really embittered quite a few people against him, but more, as I hinted, there’s, there’s more issues related to the sack, the sacking after doing so, a plebeian Tribune named Sicinius advocated for splitting Rome in half. Said half the Senate can go to Veii, half the plebeian populace can go there. You know, it’s a great place to live, despite what the Romans had just done to it. It’s defensible. They have good land, that sort of thing, and plus, it’s going to enrich everybody, because everyone’s going to get land, and we’re all going to be very happy doing this. Well, the plebeians probably loved this. The Senate, the patricians, they hated it, including Camillus, and the reason was, you’re splitting Rome in half, that’s going to weaken them, the two cities, even though they were supposed to continue operating under the same city state, they probably would have fought each other. And also, the very religious Romans probably thought that this was a slap in the face to the gods who had cultivated Rome that space for them. So Camillus fights against his proposal, and he and the patricians are victorious. But again, a lot of the people were probably pretty upset. They thought that they were going to get farmland to settle and these sorts of things. So then finally, the last issue related to the sacking comes from a different plebeian tribium, and this is Apuleius. He filed bogus charges against Camillus, suggesting that he had embezzled spoils from the the sacked city. Now the ancient writers are pretty much in unison saying that this is false. Camillus didn’t do anything wrong. The the justification for this was supposedly that Camillus had some bronze doors on his house, and supposedly that came from Veii he was allowed to collect spoils. He probably was even allowed to collect the commander’s share of spoils. So that’s not an indictment. This was Trump. These were trumped up charges. But the problem for Camillus is that he knew he was gonna lose in court. He was not gonna be able to win this his powerful friends wouldn’t be able to help them, or at least refuse to help him. So instead of suffering the ignominy of a kangaroo court condemning him, he decides to go live in exile, voluntarily in the city of Ardea, which explains why he was absent when. The Gauls sacked Rome, but when he comes back and saves the Romans from the Gauls, the people, once again mold the idea of relocating wholesale to Veii Camillus, again, was very opposed to this, and he derailed the measure, but it probably irked a lot of Romans, and then the last piece that really that tainted Camillus legacy to a much more minor degree, had to do with Marcus Manlius Capitolinus. He was a patrician who charted his own path to power. He, for some reason, felt like he couldn’t rely on the patricians to propel him toward his dreams. And he saw the plebeian body is much larger, and he knew that they suffered under the yoke of debt. So he advocated for essentially total debt forgiveness. He said the patricians actually had enough money to pay for all their debt, pay all the debt off, and they were hiding the money. And he knew where it was, but he wasn’t going to tell him where it was at just yet, at least. So Marcus Manlius Capitolinus, decides to go a step further, like he wants power, and he tries to use debt forgiveness to do that, something that really doesn’t go far, but it seems that he starts to warm to the idea of a revolt, maybe taking over the Capitoline Hill. And he’s also open to becoming the king, which is something at that time of Rome, yeah, they didn’t like kings too much, not at all. So eventually the Romans captured him, they tried him. Camillus was involved in in this situation, and eventually they they executed him in pretty gruesome fashion. And of course, this really angered a lot of the debt stricken plebs. So Camillus many great things to talk about, but he was not without controversy.
Dr Rad 26:48
Ah, it sounds like his patrician loyalties are what often gets him into trouble. So we know that the Romans love using an exemplar in both ways, both people that are to be admired, and also people that are to be reviled. Tell us what are the distinctive qualities that we can see in someone like Camillus?
Marc Hyden 27:08
Well, Camillus, despite these faults, despite controversy, he emerges, at least in the canonical accounts and much of the literature, unscathed. Really, he’s able to find redemption. And as I mentioned earlier, a lot of his infractions were a lot. They were pretty minor compared to the later, mad emperors and all that sort of thing. So I would say, first of all, if we’re talking about the distinctive qualities that that they saw in in Camillus, first of all, he was a Roman patriot. No one could say that he wasn’t. The Romans turned on him, and they sent at least according to the canonical account, and they sent him essentially into exile. These are his friends, his compatriots, the people that he had defended. They turned on him. But then when the senonas Sack Rome, they beg him to come back, and he’s willing to do so he comes back and he saves them, and apparently he doesn’t hold any grudges, uh, afterwards. So this is, this is kind of a selfless patriotism that we see from from Camillus. He also obeyed the law to the letter. And this is something that, you know, these fastidious Romans appreciate it, so before coming to Rome’s defense, after the sacking from the Gauls, he required that the government appoint him dictator, otherwise he would only be a private citizen without any power to lead armies. Now it was pretty difficult for this besieged band of Romans to appoint him dictator. But they managed to do it, and it pleased him, and it left him feeling as though that he was obeying the law and he wasn’t violating the Constitution, the unwritten constitution, in any way, shape or form. So he obeyed, obeyed the law, and he was generally fastidious at it. He also understood inequity to a degree, and often tried to avoid its controversy. So at the beginning of the podcast, we talked about how the consulship was reserved only for patricians at this point. Now, some rich plebeians, they certainly wanted to participate in this, and they would soon be able to. But this created a lot of controversy, and despite having this incredibly long curriculum vitae, Camillus refuses to ever be consul. He’s consular Tribune, but he won’t be Consul, supposedly, because of the controversy that surrounds it, and he also respected the gods. The Romans were a very religious people. I mean, some of their religious activities and everything are just really bizarre to modernize, but it was their thing. You know, it can’t be too judgmental. But he respected the gods, and even though he forgot or somehow didn’t immediately fulfill his promised tithe to Apollo, he generally worked to keep his his other oaths and remember the the pantheon of deities and then the last. Last the last distinctive quality, I think, that I would mention, is that he was a man of integrity. In the Faliscan the Falerii episode, he refused to use children as pawns in war, and he even worked to ease strife between the plebs and patricians after the plebeian tribunes, this is later in his life, suspended government for around five years and obstructed just about everything. Camillus worked to secure a compromise that gave the plebs more power. Then, after he did that, they could finally hold the consulship and some some pretty serious priesthoods. And this ended some of the inequity, but certainly, certainly not all of it.
Dr Rad 30:40
Politician with integrity,
Dr G 30:42
such a rare combination. Well, would we ever see such a man in our lifetimes? So I think this leads us really nicely into thinking about legacy, because Camillus gets a lot of attention in our ancient source material, and a lot of these written sources in particular are coming from a much later period of time, often the first century BCE, whereas Camillus is living his life and career in the fifth and the fourth centuries. So there’s quite a long period of time between the activities he’s involved in and when we get this flourishing of material about him. So I’m interested in what is Camillus legacy for the Romans?
Marc Hyden 31:23
To the Romans, Camillus was, without a doubt, he was an exempla of Roman virtue, which is a little bit different than you know what the virtues that you and I probably hold, but for Roman virtue, he was an exempla, and he was a role model for all subsequent leaders. Now you talked about a lot of the writings come hundreds of years after he died, and that is a problem with a lot of this, that era and the monarchical era. And I think he probably was able to shine in that era, when you had increasing numbers of corrupt and base politicians and people that were involved in power grabs and tried to violate the constitution. They had someone that they could say in row in our history, that is who you should be like. Now, of course, we know what happened to the Roman Republic and then what happened to the Empire. They kind of forgot their way, but they had someone to point to when they needed to try to correct themselves and the remote the Romans, they looked at him more than just this exemplar. He was the man who who finally vanquished Veii, he saved Rome from the Gauls. He rebuilt it after they had razed it to the ground, and he worked to ensure that the city of Rome, despite numerous, to at least two attempts to abandon or partially abandon, it would continue to be the seat of the republic and the empire for for hundreds of years to come. I mean, he’s known as the second founder of Rome. He held so many consulships, dictatorships, triumphs, and even was a censorship I mean, this is a man, a bit of a renaissance man that did just about everything and did almost everything right, at least according to very good PR,
Dr G 33:09
sounds dangerous. Sounds like it might almost be too good to be true.
Dr Rad 33:14
Ah, speaking of that, Dr, G, let’s talk about the historiography around Camillus. So one of the more intriguing theories we have stumbled across when we’ve been covering this time period is that Camillus was not, in fact, a historical figure at all, or at least his life and career might actually be some sort of amalgamation, perhaps, of numerous men from his family clan, and we’re curious to hear what your thoughts are on this mark.
Marc Hyden 33:46
So I take the position that I believe Camillus absolutely was a historical character who played an outsized role in the early republic, and he probably even played a role in the sacking of Veii say this, he’s incredibly well attested in the literary record, although it does come later, he’s well attested in the Fasti Capitolini and even famed historian, I think he was famed historian, TJ Cornell casted no doubt whatsoever that he was a historical character that did some some fantastic things for the Romans. However, outside of those two things, that he was a historical character, held some public offices of some kind, and did something at Veii after that, we really don’t know. That’s when things start getting a little fuzzy. So I think we can look at some of the issues around it. You know, I talked about the siege of the eye lasting 10 years. Well, we don’t believe most historians don’t believe it actually did that was a literary creation that they tried to borrow from, the Trojan War that supposedly lasted 10 years and the mysticism around it. But we still think. I mean, Veii was a real place, and it was sacked, and there’s no reason to believe that Camillus didn’t have something to do with that. Now, plenty of people have talked about Camillus life being embellished, exaggerated and combined with his family members, and I think that absolutely probably is the case. I don’t have any reason to doubt that it would be just incredibly hard, probably, especially in this era, to accomplish so many different things, even into old age. You know, we’ve talked about the Gallic sack of Rome, but there is supposedly another war that he led against against a different band of Gauls, and he would have been in his late 70s. My goodness, in ancient Rome, that’s a ripe old age, and you’re supposed to be leading armies. I’m not so sure. So I think that there was a family, the Marcus Furius Camilla’s, his family, his descendants and relatives, that were really accomplished. And somehow it got attached into this, this one person, you know, it might have been a son that engaged the Gauls at a later time. And there’s some theories about how this might have happened. You know, the histories were very bad back then. So people, there were family histories, there were eulogies to go off of. So families might have been embellishing their own story and building up this hero, but yes, I think Camillus was real. Did he do everything that the ancients said? Almost certainly not.
Speaker 1 36:28
Oh, Camillus a man of many faces and perhaps many men at the same time. To round off this conversation, one of the things that gets bandied about about Camillus, is this idea that he is actually the second founder of Rome. And I kind of love the phrasing of this. It’s almost, it’s a very Roman idea to think about somebody in this way. And I’m interested in, to what extent do you agree with this idea that he’s the second founder?
Marc Hyden 36:57
Well, it’s romantic. Let’s, let’s, let’s not doubt this one too. I’m joking. Of course, this is a tough one, so especially with only limited knowledge, I can tell you what the archeological evidence shows, what my research has showed, and we can just put the cards on the table. So the Romans, they mostly believe that he was the second founder of Rome. And modern scholarship, of course, who cast doubt on that? Now he supposedly received the sobriquet from defeating the Senones, defeating a measure to abandon Rome for Veii and then overseeing Rome’s reconstruction. So that’s why they named him. Supposedly named him Rome’s second founder. He was another Romulus. So Romulus is the first founder. He literally founds Rome. Camillus saves it and rebuilds it. And then, of course, Marius becomes the third founder of Rome, or was at least styled that way. But there’s a lot of problems here with regard to Camillus, which, of course, is someone who thinks he’s a pretty cool guy. Breaks my heart, because Camillus might not have actually had anything to do with the Senones, the sacking in the first place, which really just kind of throws Roman history out the window. And the theory behind this, it resonates. The claim is that his exile is actually a work of fiction, because it was just so embarrassing that the Romans were sacked by a bunch of bumbling barbarians that they needed to exculpate their hero, this guy that had already sacked their chief enemy, so they sent him into exile, so that he wouldn’t have been part of this sacking and this embarrassment, at least that’s the theory. He might have been there when it happened, and then went and left the city like many other people did. But there’s actually some ancient evidence that the Romans didn’t kick the the Gauls out. They actually paid them. There are a few references to the Romans getting the the money back later, sometimes much later, which is really embarrassing for the Romans that they had to pay these people to leave, so Camillus probably not in exile, probably didn’t come save them. The last real indictment on the being called the second founder is that the archeological evidence doesn’t show that the sacking was really that bad. It was a very mild sacking, as far as they go.
Dr Rad 39:18
Well, more like a pillow tussle.
Marc Hyden 39:20
The Gauls were busy. They were doing other stuff. They were probably in the pay of the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysus. So they were probably going south, tackling some of Syracuse’s enemies, and then if there was anyone in their way, they would just go ahead and sack them and steal all their stuff and then move on. So like they didn’t want to hang around. They probably had other things to do. But and also, the archeological evidence shows that the sacking was pretty mild, so there might not have been any reason for the Romans to talk about abandoning Rome in the first place. And if there was, it’s very possible that the that Camillus is counseled against it, but everything else. Is really doubtful. And there is one other theory that, in fact, Camillus was later grafted onto the story to replace a city Caere, which had come to the Romans aid during the sacking. Well, eventually their friendship fell apart, and they didn’t want to sing the praises of the city that they no longer liked. So they created this myth around Camillus, saving them and not the city that they don’t like anymore. That’s not they’re not cool. And even when you look at more ancient sources, Aristotle has a very curious line. So he was a little interested in what was happening in Rome, even though Rome was not important on a global scale at the time, and he said that a certain Lucius saved Rome, not a certain Camillus, which some people have theorized it was, I think it was Lucius Albinus who had selflessly tried to help the Vestal virgins. But it could have been anybody else, because being called Lucius was kind of like being called John. Now, it could be anyone. But it’s very telling that he didn’t say Camillus, and for that, it breaks my heart a little bit.
Speaker 1 41:07
Oh, Camillus, not even getting his first name, right. Aristotle, come on.
Dr Rad 41:13
Oh, well, what a fascinating look at Camillus’ life. We know we covered over so many episodes, it’s really great to be able to pull it all together into one biographic study. So thank you so much for joining us today, Marc.
Marc Hyden 41:25
Hey, thank you so much for having me and and let me nerd out on Camillus.
Dr Rad 41:28
I’m sure our listeners would love to pick up a copy of your biography of Camillus. It is highly readable, I can definitely say that. And we really look forward to having you back on to talk about the emperor Titus soon.
Marc Hyden 41:40
You know, not a second or third or fourth founder, but he’s a pretty interesting guy. I was
Dr G 41:45
going to say he’s very cool. I’m excited to talk about him.
Dr Rad 42:00
Thank you for listening to this special episode of the partial historians. You can find our sources sound credits and an automated transcript in our show notes. Our music is by Bettina Joy De Guzman. The Partial Historians is part of The Memory Collective, creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious and inclusive. To find more from the Memory Collective head to collectivemem.com you too can support our show and help us to produce more engaging content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon. In return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes and add free content. If monthly patronage is not your style, we have merch. We have a book, or you can just buy us a coffee on ko fi. And we’d like to say big thank you to all our Patreon supporters for making special episodes like this one possible. However, if your Imperial coffers do not overfloweth, one of the easiest and most important ways to help us is to tell someone about the show or give us a five star review wherever you listen. Until next time we are yours in ancient Rome.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Leave a reply 🙂