Woe to the Vanquished

In the summer of 390 BC, by the traditional Roman date, an army of Gauls from northern Italy routed the Romans at the river Allia, eleven Roman miles from the city. Romans long marked the day as one of ill omen. The Gauls entered Rome almost unopposed, sacked and burned it, and laid siege to the Capitol, where the last defenders held out. Greek sources and many modern historians put the sack a few years later, around 387 BC.

After months of siege and hunger, Livy says, the military tribune Quintus Sulpicius agreed a ransom of a thousand pounds of gold. The Gauls brought false weights, and when Sulpicius objected, their chief threw his sword onto the scale with the words vae victis. Livy then has the exiled general Camillus arrive, declare that Rome would be redeemed with iron rather than gold, and drive the Gauls out. Polybius, writing earlier, says they left on agreed terms to defend their own lands. The city was rebuilt, and about a decade later its walls were renewed in stone.