Show notes
The Fall of Veii is finally upon us – or perhaps we should say it was finally upon them! After a shameful defeat early in 396, the Romans decided to appoint a dictator. It is time for a Republican hero to burst into the spotlight. Welcome to the stage, Marcus Furius Camillus!Episode 159 – The Fall of Veii: Part II A Hero is Born Camillus is a legendary figure of Rome, possibly in more ways than one. He was held up as an exemplar for generations. Even the emperor Augustus was a fangirl. We have mentioned him before, but it is his service as dictator during the siege against Veii where we get to see him shine for the first time.Bronze Sculpture of Marcus Furius Camillus ca. 1st century AD from the Capitoline Museum. Courtesy of Ancient Times Blog Spot.The Fall of VeiiThe appointment of Camillus restored a sense of optimism to Rome and people were literally queuing up to serve under him. With suspicious ease, Camillus dealt with Veii’s allies, the Faliscans and Capenates, before turning his attention to breaking the siege once and for all. Through clever use of tunnels and military distractions, the Romans defeated their enemy – at last! Rome has been engaged in almost constant warfare with neighbouring towns and cities for an exceptionally long time, but it is hard to overstate the importance of this conquest. Not only was Veii a wealthy and serious rival, but this acquisition also doubled the size of Rome’s territory. To quote Camillus as he surveyed the battlefield, “Cha-ching!”However, Camillus made some promises to the gods both before and after this final battle, promises that will have various impacts for our hero and for Rome…. Stay tuned for the next instalment on 396 BCE!Things to Look Out For: The ongoing presence of the vanilla bean plebeian, Publius Licinius Calvus EsquilinusA bootylicious face-off between Licinius Calvus and Appius ClaudiusThe resurgence of Mater MatutaAllusions to the Trojan WarThe discovery of the ancient version of BDE (BRME – Big Roman Masculine Energy)Livy constructing history before our very eyes!Our Players for 396 BCEMilitary Tribunes with Consular PowerL. Titinius L. f. M. n. Pansa Saccus Mil Tr. c. p. 400P. Licinius P. f. P. n. Calvus Esquilinus Mil. Tr. c .p. 400P. Manlius Sp. f. C. n. Capitolinus Mil Tr. c. p. 400Q. Manlius A. f. Cn. n. Vulso Capitolinus? (Pat)Cn. Genucius M. f. M. n. Augurinus Mil. Tr. c. p. 399L. Atilius L. f. L. n. Priscus Mil Tr. c. p. 399Dictator M. Furius L. f. Sp. n. Camillus (Pat) Mil Tr. c. p. 401, 398, 394, 386, 384, 381Master of the HorseP. Cornelius P. f. M. n. Maluginensis (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 397, 390InterregesL. Valerius (Potitus) (Pat) Cos. 393, 392, Mil. Tr. c.p. 414, 406, 403, 401. 398Q. Servilius Fidenas (Pat)M. Furius Camillus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 401, 398, 394, 386, 384, 381Need to catch up on the first part of 396 BCE? Check out Part One on the Fall of Veii!Our SourcesDr Rad reads Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 5.18-23.Dr G reads Diodorus Siculus, 14.90.1, 14.93.2-3; Fasti Capitolini; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 12.13-16, 13.1-3; Plutarch, Life of Camillus, 5-8; Pliny, Natural History, 33.111; Appian, Ital. 8; Florus, 1.17; Valerius Maximus 1.5.2, 1.8.3; Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, 17.21; Eutropius, 1.20; Augustine, City of God, 2.17; Orosius, 2.19.1-4; Zonaras, 7.21.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) 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.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_e726220Raaflaub, K. A. 2006. Social struggles in archaic Rome: new perspectives on the conflict of the orders (2nd 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.Sound CreditsOur music is provided by Bettina Joy de Guzman. Sound effects courtesy of Orange Free Sounds.Automated TranscriptDr Rad 0:15Music. Welcome to the partial historians.Dr G 0:18We explore all the details of ancient Rome,Dr Rad 0:23everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles wage and when citizens turn against each other, I'm Dr Rad andDr G 0:33I'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 0:44Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.Dr G 0:58Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the partial historians. I am Dr GDr Rad 1:06and I am Dr Rad,Dr G 1:08and we are in the middle of what is a chaotic time for ancient Rome. It's the year 396, BCE, and oh, boy, are they not having a good time, as far as we can tell so far,Dr Rad 1:26indeed, 396 is a very big year for Rome. However, the start of it was not great. Mm,Dr G 1:33not great at all. It seems like there were some reversals in the field. There were some poorly planned ambushes and some confusing dealing about with Father Son combinations in the military tribunes with consular power.Dr Rad 1:48Yeah. Just for those who didn't listen to our last episode A) I'd probably go and do that, because this is a bit of a narrative that we're building here. However, we're dealing with the end of the siege of Veii, an Etruscan city just to the north of Rome. Rome has had a somewhat complicated relationship with over the years, extending all the way back. And whilst the ancient sources make reference to the fact that, oh yeah, there was this truce from the second big conflict between Rome and of Veii, and it run out, and then there was a king, and he was a bit of a douche bag. And not only did the Romans not like the king of A, but the Etruscans didn't like the king of Veii, and that's why all of this happened. In spite of that, as Dr G rightly pointed out in our previous episode, it's probably really about resources, trade influence in the region, because these are two increasingly important places, I would say, in the previous century that we've been looking at. Now we're entering a whole new century.Dr G 2:54It does seem like they is the Southern tale of Etruscan influence in the fifth century, BCE. And so the big power base that is through central to North Italy is the is a true area, the Etruscan people, and Rome is now this sort of growing player in the center of Italy. And they seem to want a slice of the Etruscan pie. They've decided maybe they has to go to make way for the growth of Rome itself into a grander place.Dr Rad 3:28And we've got some allies of ve who have realized that a growing Rome is no good for them. That's true,Dr G 3:37and Rome itself has been cultivating a whole bunch of their neighbors into being, variously allies or enemies, depending on how they've been treating them to the east and to the south. So there is a kind of a sense that there are a couple of blocks of power developing. The Etruscan block has been around for a long time, and it seems like maybe it might be on the wane in various ways, particularly when it comes to this southern edge where Rome is butting up against it. But there's also this sense that there are now growing disputes amongst Rome and her other neighbors, some of which are turning violent. The Volscian The Aequians, have been long on the radar. But there's also theDr Rad 4:22turning violence.Dr G 4:25There's also the Hernicians and the Latins that seem to have come together with Rome. Now, before we get too much further into the action of this year, I want to hark back to something that came up a couple of episodes ago now, where you were talking about the Roman electoral process and the concept of the praerogativa. Yes,Dr Rad 4:49this is how Calvus was apparently chosen for election to be one of the military tribunes with consular power in 396 even though he was not running for said election.Dr G 4:59How. Could it be possible to get elected in when you're not even running? Well, no, the power of the praerogativa may be the answer to this question. Now we don't know too much about it. In this very early period, like many things to do with ancient Rome, we only become more sure about stuff when we hit about the mid to late third century BCE. So we're about 150 years away from having any good information to work with.Dr Rad 5:28So probably be in our 60s for the time we get to that.Dr G 5:31But those problems aside, this comes out of the concept of the comitia centuriata, which is this idea that some voting took place in a military style setup, where people were organized into centuries at some point in Rome's history, the idea of the electoral centuries deviates very wildly from the military setup. That's not our problem right now. We don't know what's going on, really, but we have this group, the comitia centuriata. They all turn up in their little groups. In their centuries, they head to the Campus Martius, and they get involved in a voting thing. Now, the prey rogativo Part of this is a invention that we don't know when it starts, but it is an innovation where they change who gets to be the first entry to vote. And it used to be the case that it always followed the same order. You would start with the equestrians, strangely enough, and then you'd get into the other groups. But with the concept of the prerogative of what you could do is that you could have a nominated group from one of the higher echelons of society be the first one to vote. It was kind of like a lucky draw, but only the best of the best got to be put into the draw to be selected in the first place, and then they would kind of set the tone for how the rest of the vote should go. Now it wasn't the case that all the other centuries, necessarily immediately would fall in line with what was voted for by that first group that was chosen as the prey rogativo. There seems to be some ideas that come to us in our very much later sources of the Republic like Cicero, that there was a bit of an omen component to all of this. So it was read as a bit of a sign of how the electoral result was going to go. So there was a persuasive factor in it that for the Romans would have been quite important, because they hold a lot of importance in things that relate to the gods and omens and signs. But that didn't necessarily seal the deal. But if you had a group that came out and decided that they wanted somebody in to be voted, like this situation with calvis, who hadn't been nominated, hadn't put themselves forward, hadn't canvas or any of that sort of thing, that could really turn the tide for something, because all of a sudden everybody like, yeah, we need that guy, yeah. Why wasn't he running? And that might have a cascading effect. IDr Rad 8:05think it definitely did. Everyone decided they wanted a taste of that vanilla bean plebeian.Dr G 8:13And so this is how you might get somebody voted in who didn't stand for a position, absolutely,Dr Rad 8:19unfortunately. Dr G, he hasn't got much longer in this position that we're talking about. We did list our magistrates in the previous episodes. By the way, everyone I know you're used to us listing out who all the magistrates are. So if you want to know the full details, please go and listen to the previous episode.Dr G 8:36I was going to say, I'm not going to put myself through that again. Yeah,Dr Rad 8:40definitely not. It's way too much Latin for anybody to have to repeat. So we were up to this point in my narrative of Livy, where a rumor had gotten out of hand after the Romans had suffered a military reversal in the field against these allies of they, the Faliscans and the Capenates, who, by the way, were not themselves Etruscans, but were allied with they, because they were geographically and presumably politically tied to they, and they understood that the Romans were going to be coming for them, so they had managed to secure this success. Everyone's panicking in the city. Women are praying. The Romans feel like it really is time for Veii tofall because they've done everything that the gods wanted them to do. They have drained that stupid album Lake, which had too much water. They have also made sure that the issue in the previous year where you had the magistrates elected improperly, that's been resolved. So they've repeated whatever rituals or held whatever festivals or sacrifices needed to be held again, so they're ready. They're like now is the time God's to show us that you've been paying attention. Have you been paying attention to all the things that we have done to please you? And it turns out, Dr G. That maybe they just have, however, before we get to that moment, it's time for a dictator to be elected. Because clearly, with one military Tribune with consular power, dead in the field, and the other one disgraced, because this defeat is so embarrassing, you need someone with real chutzpah.Dr G 10:20Well, it does make sense, because everybody in Rome, as we noted in the previous episode, is in a bit of a panic. People have rushed to the temples being like guards, help us out. People have run to the walls of the city to look over and be like, can I see the enemy approaching? Like, is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the Etruscins. So that level of panic is the kind of thing that sets the stage up really nicely for the ultimate panic move that Rome has, which is put a dictator in charge, andDr Rad 10:56are you ready to meet him? Dr G my name is Marcus Furius Camillus, father to other people with a similar name, related to people who are Spurius Furius andDr G 11:08I will have my vengeanceDr Rad 11:12in this life all the next. I'm part of the Furii clan, but I'm always very calm. Actually, IDr G 11:17feel like we could both be a pretty good Russell Crowe. Maybe we should do that one time.Dr Rad 11:21Well, Rusty, if you're listening, love to have you on the show, mate. Let's collaborate. So Marcus Furius Camillus is part of our favorite gens, the fury eye, however, lacking the praenomen that we prefer.Dr G 11:37He is no Spurius. That's true, he'sDr Rad 11:39no Spurius. But you know what, it seems like, the ancient Romans didn't care as much about the alliteration of their names as we did, because he is definitely, I'm gonna get a limb, the most…
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