Episode 173 – Nobody Beats Camillus

We return to 389 BCE to see just how Rome recovered from the Gallic Sack.

Camillus is dictator in Rome and Ahala is his trusty master of the horse. It’s time for Rome to make things right in their immediate area. There are a bunch of neighbours to deal with, including the Etruscans, the Volscians, and the Aequians.

We’re in a hazy period where our sources appear out of sync with each other. Livy offers the most fulsome narrative that has survived for this period whereas sources like Diodorus Siculus and Dionysius of Halicarnassus are fragmentary or have their focus elsewhere.

The Power of Camillus

By this time, Camillus’ reputation is so cemented in the region that his mere presence at the head of a military is enough to leave their enemies shaken if not stirred. The Volscians are certainly not happy when Camillus and crew turn up on their doorstep. When Camillus turns up at the city of Bolae of the Aequians, will they also fall at his feet?

Things to listen out for

• Burning ramparts!
• Booty and payment of soldiers?
• Seventy years of conflict with the Volscians?
• Deditio – total and unconditional surrender
• Central Italy as the site of a zombie apocalypse
• A very fast back and forth of city taking – hello, Sutrium!
• The survival of the scared hut to Mars on the Palatine
• The Tyrant of Syracuse is back for our ‘Meanwhile in Sicily’ segment
• Philoxenus, the dithyrambic poet
• Plato’s sojourn to Sicily

Our Players 389 BCE

Military Tribunes with Consular Power

• L. Valerius L. f. L. n. Poplicola (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 394, 387, 383, 380
• L. Verginius – f. -n. Tricostus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 402?
• P. Cornelius – f.-n. —– (Pat)
• A. Manlius (T. f. A. n. Capitolinus) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 387? 385, 383, 370
• L. Aemilius Mam. f. M. n. Mamercinus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 391, 387, 383, 382, 380
• L. Postumius – f. – n. Albinus Regillensis (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 381
• [?L. Papirius (-f. -n. Mugillanus?) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 380?
• ?M. Furius]

Dictator

• M. Furius L. f. Sp. n. Camillus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 401, 398, 393, 386, 384, 381

Master of the Horse

• C. Servilius -f. -n. Ahala (Pat)

Censors

• ?M. Furius (Fusus?) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 403?
• ?L. Papirius (Mugillanus?) (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 380?

Interreges

• P. Cornelius Scipio (Pat) Mil. Tr. c. p. 395, 394?
• M. Furius Camillus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 401, 398, 394, 386, 384, 381

Our Sources

• Dr Rad reads Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 6.2
• Dr G reads Diodorus Siculus 14.117, 15.2.1; 15.6-7; 15.8.1; 15.22.1; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 14.2-3; Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.16.22; Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 5.17
• Armstrong, Jeremy. War and Society in Early Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316145241.
• 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)
• 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) 
• 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.
• 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.
• Hyden, Marc, Marcus Furius Camillus: The Life of Rome’s Second Founder. Pen and Sword, 2023.
• 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.
• McIntyre, Gwynaeth. “Camillus as Numa: Religion in Livy’s Refoundation Narratives.” Journal of Ancient History 6, no. 1 (2018): 63–79. https://doi.org/10.1515/jah-2017-0011.
• Oakley, S. P. (Ed.). (2016). A commentary on Livy : books VI-X. Vol. 1, Introduction and book VI. Oxford University Press.
• Ogilvie, R. M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy: Books 1-5 (Clarendon Press). 
• Raaflaub, K. A. 2006. Social struggles in archaic Rome: new perspectives on the conflict of the orders (2^nd ed). (Wiley).
• Stevenson, T.R. “Parens Patriae and Livy’s Camillus.” Ramus 29, no. 1 (2000): 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048671X00001673.

Linguistic map of Central Italy with the major locations marked for convenience. For the source of this map, see Wikimedia Commons.

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.
Additional sound effects:
– Pixabay
– Sample Focus
– BBC Sound Effects

Automated Transcript

Lightly edited for our wonderful Australian accents