The Fall of Veii: Part II

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 Veii

The 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 Esquilinus
• A bootylicious face-off between Licinius Calvus and Appius Claudius
• The resurgence of Mater Matuta
• Allusions to the Trojan War
• The discovery of the ancient version of BDE (BRME – Big Roman Masculine Energy)
• Livy constructing history before our very eyes!

Our Players for 396 BCE

Military Tribunes with Consular Power

• L. Titinius L. f. M. n. Pansa Saccus Mil Tr. c. p. 400
• P. Licinius P. f. P. n. Calvus Esquilinus Mil. Tr. c .p. 400
• P. Manlius Sp. f. C. n. Capitolinus Mil Tr. c. p. 400
• Q. Manlius A. f. Cn. n. Vulso Capitolinus? (Pat)
• Cn. Genucius M. f. M. n. Augurinus Mil. Tr. c. p. 399
• L. Atilius L. f. L. n. Priscus Mil Tr. c. p. 399

Dictator

• M. Furius L. f. Sp. n. Camillus (Pat) Mil Tr. c. p. 401, 398, 394, 386, 384, 381

Master of the Horse

• P. Cornelius P. f. M. n. Maluginensis (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 397, 390

Interreges

• L. Valerius (Potitus) (Pat) Cos. 393, 392, Mil. Tr. c.p. 414, 406, 403, 401. 398
• Q. Servilius Fidenas (Pat)
• M. Furius Camillus (Pat) Mil. Tr. c.p. 401, 398, 394, 386, 384, 381

Need to catch up on the first part of 396 BCE? Check out Part One on the Fall of Veii!

Our Sources

• Dr 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_e726220
• Raaflaub, K. A. 2006. Social struggles in archaic Rome: new perspectives on the conflict of the orders (2^nd 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 Credits

Our music is provided by Bettina Joy de Guzman. Sound effects courtesy of Orange Free Sounds.

Automated Transcript

Dr Rad 0:15
Music. Welcome to the partial historians.

Dr G 0:18
We explore all the details of ancient Rome,

Dr Rad 0:23
everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles wage and when citizens turn against each other, I'm Dr Rad and

Dr G 0:33
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 G 0:58
Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the partial historians. I am Dr G

Dr Rad 1:06
and I am Dr Rad,

Dr G 1:08
and 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 1:26
indeed, 396 is a very big year for Rome. However, the start of it was not great. Mm,

Dr G 1:33
not 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 1:48
Yeah. 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 2:54
It 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 3:28
And we've got some allies of ve who have realized that a growing Rome is no good for them. That's true,

Dr G 3:37
and 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 the

Dr Rad 4:22
turning violence.

Dr G 4:25
There'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 4:49
this 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 4:59
How. 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 5:28
So probably be in our 60s for the time we get to that.

Dr G 5:31
But 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. I

Dr Rad 8:05
think it definitely did. Everyone decided they wanted a taste of that vanilla bean plebeian.

Dr G 8:13
And so this is how you might get somebody voted in who didn't stand for a position, absolutely,

Dr Rad 8:19
unfortunately. 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 8:36
I was going to say, I'm not going to put myself through that again. Yeah,

Dr Rad 8:40
definitely 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 10:20
Well, 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, and

Dr Rad 10:56
are 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 and

Dr G 11:08
I will have my vengeance

Dr Rad 11:12
in this life all the next. I'm part of the Furii clan, but I'm always very calm. Actually, I

Dr G 11:17
feel like we could both be a pretty good Russell Crowe. Maybe we should do that one time.

Dr Rad 11:21
Well, 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 11:37
He is no Spurius. That's true, he's

Dr Rad 11:39
no 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 famous of the Furii clan. I'm not gonna go into all the details about him right now, because that will obviously unfold as we go into this. But the whole fall of a that is about to happen very much tied up with this particular figure.

Dr G 12:04
You've given away the game too soon. I'm

Dr Rad 12:06
sorry, but I feel like I've said it at least 100 times by now, everyone should know. So there's a few important elements to the story of the fall of a which, as we've said, is so crucial to the way that the Romans view their own history. They say this is such a big thing that happens to them, and Camillus is a part of that. Now, we've talked in the previous episode about the fact that people like Livy are writing much later. They're building on a variety of sources. You know, family Chronicles, epic poetry, archeology, presumably like some remains and stuff that they see around and one of the things that they would probably have seen people like Livy. I mean, when I say they there's a statue of Camillus that was erected and still around, I would say, in his time period. And Camillus actually becomes a really important figure for the way that the Romans think about themselves and what makes a virtuous citizen. You know his story has huge resonance throughout the ages. He's someone who inspires later, people like the scipios, who we'll hear about during war with Carthage, Sulla and even your favorite Dr G Augustus, yes. So

Dr G 13:18
Camillus ends up having this incredible reputation. That means that he has a type of fame that within Roman society is pretty rare. It's ongoing. People refer back to him. He gains a whole bunch of prestigious kind of epithets that are associated with him. This is the start of his journey in some respects that we're going to be looking at in this particular episode. And I think it's going to be the culmination of his career as a whole, which I reckon we'll we'll do a wrap up episode where we we look at all of that in detail, because this is going to be part of his story, but not the whole of it. And this is the start of the sorts of things that will make his reputation. But it's not like he gets off to like a fantastic start now, obviously it is an amazing thing to be made dictator. That doesn't happen to most Roman politicians. There is only a select group of these people that end up in this role, and the idea of the dictator is really a product of need. So Rome has found itself in a desperate situation. They think that everything is looking terrible, and they turn to a single individual and say, can you take charge of everything? Carte blanche while you're in power, look after this problem and solve it for us. And they choose Camillus in this moment. And it would be amazing if we knew what it was about Camillus that made him the preferred choice. And maybe Livy talks about this, but certainly none of my sources reveal that to me.

Dr Rad 14:57
I was going to say I'm so glad you asked.

Dr G 15:01
I've set you up so well, gonna give you

Dr Rad 15:03
a bit of foreshadowing here about Camillus, there is a bit of doubt about whether he actually existed

Dr G 15:10
or, Oh no, he's

Dr Rad 15:13
one of those people. Look, I think a lot of people agree that he is a historical figure. However, like with a lot of things from this time period, including the fall of they he's been so mythologized, and there have been so many layers added to him, including, again, by Augustus, the fact that Augustus is like, hey, who am I going to put in my gallery of heroes when I'm working on the forum of Augustus, I know. I'll put Camillus in there. It's hard to untangle all of those different layers, because we don't see a clear emergence where the Romans are gradually adding things. So it's really hard to know exactly who Camillus was, where he came from, but certainly the fall of they has become an important part of his great story as a citizen of Rome. I think I would say that in the scholarship, most people think that this particular part of his story, this fall of a part of his biography, is probably one of the earlier events that are attached to Camillus and his legend. So whether that makes you feel more secure or not, dear listeners, let us know.

Dr G 16:30
Can I tell you some of the things related to this incident that come up in the source material that I have so you can verify against what Livy might be telling us. So it seems that he becomes dictator. And I don't have heaps of details about how that comes about, but I suspect it's the usual way. And then he's basically in charge of the siege of they and that that seems to be the main thing that he has to take care of. They're like, solve that problem for us, buddy. Yeah, it's only been 10 years that have been great to have a solution. And he's like, Sure, I'm your man. And then I get a various sort of combination of things where he either deviates from that plan slightly and does some things with the Faliscans, or he remarkably

Dr Rad 17:18
Dirty.

Dr G 17:20
He does something for Faliscan. I don't know if you're into that sort of thing, but, uh, yeah, something's going on there. And I can talk about a bit more of that detail later if it indeed fits in this year. And that's the other thing that I'm struggling with with my source material, is I'm not sure what sits in what year for some of this stuff. But the other story that gets told about the siege of Veii is that he wraps it up quite quickly with a series of tunnels.

Dr Rad 17:44
How dare you ruin the end of my story. I'm sorry, Livy, you're totally on path. I don't have much information either about why Camillus is the one who's chosen. However, lest we forget, Dr G he was one of the elected magistrates for this year, and he is from the Furii who have been very much a part of our narratives for the past 100 years. So one can only assume it's because he is part of a fairly prominent, influential, powerful Roman Gens. I will say one thing I have noticed whilst reading about Camillus, and made me reflect, because, as I say, he is held up as this Roman general par excellence. He is the fatalis Dux, the fateful leader, the one who comes when Rome needs it the most and turns things around in a really spectacular fashion. It made me realize that, like with movies, often the good guys are more boring than the villains. I mean, look with Roman history, as we talked about, because certain families are thought to have certain character traits. Sometimes it just feels like you're meeting the same person again and again, because they seem to be very similar to each other if they're from the same family, like with the happiest Claudius of the world that we have met, but there's still something kind of fantastic about how evil those sorts of people are in our minds, by our standards, whereas someone like Camillus, I don't get a strong sense of his character. And maybe this is because he's been a little bit mythologized. Hmm, maybe it's also because the Roman virtues for someone to be considered an exemplar, because Camillus definitely becomes an exemplar. So that's where the Romans tell a story about a person and hold it up so that other Romans can learn from their example about how to behave politically, how to behave as a citizen, how to behave militarily, because that's part of their whole idea of citizenship. And being a good Roman, Camillus is definitely one of those. And it's been a little while since I feel like we've had one of these figures who is an exemplar for others to follow well,

Dr G 19:48
but it's not like he is a clean, straight laced exemplar that you can just hold up and be like, Look at this heroic figure who does everything right, because he seems to get. Whole bunch of things wrong.

Dr Rad 20:01
Well, does he or did the Romans get it wrong and then they felt really bad about it? No, wait

Dr G 20:05
for it. I mean, I I assume that Livy would have this story about Camillus. But part of the problem for Camillus with the siege of they and however he takes it and the complexities of this tunnel system are outside of my source material, but I'm excited that they're there, because I always think tunnels are highly unlikely in the ancient world as a system. But you know, how long does it take you to dig a tunnel? I don't know. And how many tunnels did you have? I don't know. Have they been working on them for nine years? And it's just that Camillus finished the tunnels. I don't know that could be believable, but there is this story that is also told in companion with this story about how great he is, and how he is this sort of exemplary leader, where he seems to have a bit of a mixed relationship with the gods.

Dr Rad 21:02
Should we save that for later in his story? I

Dr G 21:06
don't know. I mean,

Dr Rad 21:09
look, I tell you what I'm gonna say, let's save it, because I think I know what you're going, where you're gonna go, and that's like the end of the narrative that Livy gives me. Oh, you reckon okay. I reckon so. I reckon so. Look, I do think I know what you mean, and I'll just say at this point in time that, yeah, you're right. But Roman examples, I don't think have to be perfect. It's more that, I suppose it's more that they are thought to teach something important in at least the majority of their life. And look, I think his failings also say something that's important too. It's not that they can't make mistakes. To me, they tend to be a little bit robotic, almost in the way that they behave. But anyway, we will see. So we have our dictator Camillus, who we will go into later. We also obviously need a master of the horse, every dictator's assistant,

Dr G 21:58
Yeah, gotta have somebody to do the paperwork. I mean, exactly.

Dr Rad 22:02
Can't expect the dictator to do it. He's got way too much to do. We've got Publius Cornelius Scipio. Now this is a name that might ring some bells to people. So the scipiones come from the malukinensis, that horrible name that we hate to say. And he is actually listed in the Fasti as Publius Cornelius Maluginenses. Now, what does that say to you? Dr G,

Dr G 22:28
that says to me that the scipios are trying to borrow his story from later on. Yeah, they decided they wanted to hop on that bandwagon. There might be two branches of that family. And yeah, I'm not, I'm not sure. But I mean, the Cornelii are a very exceptional, well known foundational partition family as well. So yeah, the layers of the way that these families will then branch out is going to become important to understanding how Roman political structures operate, because it the family thing is huge. So, yeah,

Dr Rad 23:01
look, it's not impossible that there is somebody from this family at this point in time which will become a very big deal. But we don't have someone that we feel super confident about from this family until the 350

Dr G 23:17
I was gonna say, I feel like, yeah, it's too early for scipiones. This

Dr Rad 23:21
is the general feeling, but nonetheless, here they are again, potentially showing us that the analysts or Livy are using sources from this family, and that's how they end up in earlier periods than they perhaps should be. How convenient? Yes, with the dictator, chosen master of the horse, chosen Rome, apparently, like they've had a makeover. They're feeling wildly optimistic. All of a sudden, their morale is through the roof. I mean, Rome is just literally bursting with possibility at this moment in time. Dr, G, it's

Dr G 23:56
a quick turnaround. It's the like the highs and the lows. Rome is having a very emotional roller coaster ride right now. They've they've had that huge dip where they're like, the ambush and the tragedy, and now they're like, and now we've got the best guy in as dictator, and it's going to be great. I

Dr Rad 24:12
love the way that the Romans work. Now the first thing that Camillus does as dictator is he decides he needs to dish out punishment for anyone who ran away from the encampment at they during all that horrible panic. Oh, no, yeah. He's like, you found that scary? You found the Falsicans and the Capenates coming at you scary. I'll show you scary, my friends. So he deals with that situation because he can't have cowards, right? Certainly not involved in a siege. Can't have that, Okay, fair enough. He also needs to set a levy. Gonna need some troops, obviously. So he sets a levy. He then rushes out to they, because He wants to spread that optimism to the encampment in front of they. Then he's back to Rome. Him for the levy, which he had set before he left. He's just zipping all over the place. And because Camillus is so amazing, there are no problems at all with this Levy. In fact, everyone is super keen to get in line and serve Camillus. I was

Dr G 25:15
gonna say this is why they made him dictator, because obviously he's charismatic, and it's like, it's hard to resist. And you're like, sign me up if I have to die, I want to die under Camillus, exactly

Dr Rad 25:27
what the Romans are feeling at that point in time. In fact, not just the Romans. Dr G, the Latins and the Hernicians, who you alluded to earlier, also said, Rome, we're totally behind you in this my friend, Sign me up. What a man and Camillus gives official thanks to their allies in the Senate. He's like, thanks very much, guys. Presumably this means that there were envoys who had been sent from the Latins and hanisians who made some sort of official presentation. Got my slideshow here. Sorry, the PowerPoints just on the on the fritz. Just wait one second. So

Dr G 26:02
this is the location of Veii. This is Rome. And as you can see, we just down here. And so what we're going to do is we're going to send some of our men up to Rome, and then they're going to join with Rome, and then they're all going to move north, you see, and that's how we're going to do it.

Dr Rad 26:16
Bob's your uncle, mate, sweet as. Camillus' also makes some large promises. Dr G he says that there will be great games, not just games, great games celebrated if they is taken, and this is apparently in pursuance of a senatorial decree, which seems anachronistic, because we don't think the Senate issued senatorial decrees at this moment in time. But let's ignore that and pursue our narrative. He also says that he will restore and rededicate the Temple of Mater Matuta, which had been originally set up by my favorite King Servius Tullius. Yes,

Dr G 26:58
yes. Now this does come up in some of my source material as well. So this also is Plutarch, who also insists that the master of the horse is Cornelius Scipio, which I did nothing with in my notes originally, because I was like, yeah, that's not a thing. But now that you've mentioned it, I can, I can confirm that that is an idea that continues. But yes, this idea that there will be a dedication to the Goddess mata matuta and the great games is something that Plutarch definitely goes into. And Mater Matuta herself is a pretty ancient kind of deity. So she's known in Italy. She's known in Rome. And the matuta name has a couple of different meanings, the idea of in the right moment. So she's the mother of the right moment. This is also translated as the good mother. And so there's this sense in which she is also has bears resemblance to later Christian figures as well. So she's often depicted holding a child with a solar disc around her head. And might be giving some people some imagery. How

Dr Rad 28:11
suspicious,

Dr G 28:13
and we know that she has an archeological record that goes back to at least the seventh century BC. So there's some votive offerings that are found in Latium that are connected to her. Hers is one of the oldest temples that we know about archeologically in Rome as well. So her temple is right near the forum boarium, which, if you've been to Rome, or you plan to go, is right across the road from where you've got the guy that you can put your hand in the Mouth of Truth, the Mouth of Truth just across the road. And there's a very impressive circular temple there that you can see that's to Hercules Victor, which is a much later temple. But below that there are some foundations for a temple to mata matuda, so she's considered quite ancient, even within the archeological record of Rome. So for Camillus to heart, back to her, there is some good evidence to suggest that that's not a crazy thing to do, that she is a goddess that the Romans are already very interested in and have been interested in for a long time. And maybe this is a moment of potential renewal for her cult, which is kind of exciting.

Dr Rad 29:25
Of course, it's not crazy. It's Camillus that we're talking about here. He's going to do everything to inspire the Romans and make sure that they get this amazing victory, which is right there, Dr G, right

Dr G 29:40
so close, so close, we can almost see it. We

Dr Rad 29:43
can almost see it. So Camillus and his army, freshly gathered, march out. They fight those darn Faliscans and Capenates in the country of the Nepesine, which I believe refers to the town of Nepi which. If you were going to Italy nowadays, would be known as nepi and as you might expect, is to the north of Rome. Everything's to the north of Rome at moment.

Dr G 30:10
I mean that. I mean that, obviously this is their big deal at the moment, everything to the north.

Dr Rad 30:16
So as you would expect, Camillus is very prepared. He has thought things through, unlike titanius and gaucius from the previous year. And so everything goes to plan. The Romans completely trounce the enemy. They take their camp. They take loads of booty. And I can't emphasize enough loads of booty. How

Dr G 30:40
big is the booty? A lot.

Dr Rad 30:42
Yes, exactly. It's very, very impressive. Most of it is given to the quaestor, though not directly to the soldiers. That's going to become an important detail later. I think remember

Dr G 30:55
this detail, the quaestor has all the booty

Dr Rad 30:59
they're off to find ve itself, and this is where they start to take a different approach, because Camillus is a genius. So previously, because it was a siege, you've got men on both sides, and they're constantly engaging in minor skirmishes. 10 years of minor skirmishes. Oh god, yeah, I'm gonna throw this at you, and you're gonna throw a stick at me, and I might throw something sharp and pointy, and

Dr G 31:29
your mother smells of elderberries.

Dr Rad 31:31
Yeah. I don't know what a skirmish looks like in a siege, but you know, particularly between the town walls, where the Romans have set up this. Okay, that's obviously where the action has been concentrated for the past 10 years, but we can all say it's not really going anywhere fast. So Camillus says to the people who are assembled there, no one is to fight unless I personally give you a specific order that you are allowed to fight. So no fighting whatsoever. I don't care what names they call you. I don't care if they're giving you the stink eye. I don't care if they spit in your general direction. Not happening.

Dr G 32:08
All right, so if the population of they were to decide to make an attack under these circumstances, are the Romans just to lie down and let it happen to them?

Dr Rad 32:20
Look, these are questions I don't have time for. Look, I presume if they were attacked, obviously, that would be a different story. But he means no more skirmishing. Just lay low. You don't need to fight. Just walk away. Just walk away.

Dr G 32:35
Don't think you're in charge of this siege. And start your own skirmishes because you're feeling in a bad

Dr Rad 32:40
mood. Instead, it's time to dig, send down 30 feet of rope. Now this is what is where we come back to what you were talking about, the tunnels. The plan is they're going to dig a mine that will take them right to the Citadel of they and for those of you who don't watch enough fantasy stuff, or aren't into ancient warfare, when we're talking about the Citadel, we're talking about the heart of they also

Dr G 33:08
don't think too hard about this from a geographic perspective, because the city of they, as we know, is sitting on a plateau of tufa. So it's going to take some time to hack away at the sheer rock that this city is sitting on to create a whole series of tunnels.

Dr Rad 33:26
Camillus is way ahead of you. Dr G, he has a plan. Okay? He knows that in order to get through this as quickly as possible, he needs someone to be digging at all times. So he splits the men into six groups, and each group has to work for six hours at a time, and then they rotate. So that way the digging is happening day and night, night and day.

Dr G 33:52
This is a Okay. So we've got a workforce that is operating 24/7, for however long it takes to cut through all of that rock. Yep, cool.

Dr Rad 34:05
And now this is an interesting point, because we've been talking a lot about tunnels when it comes to things connected with Veii. So obviously we've talked about the tunnel that was built in order to drain the excess water from the Alban Lake, which apparently needed to happen in order for the Romans to secure victory against Veii, and that would be the moment when they became vulnerable, the vulnerable Veieans, that's right. Yep. We also, lest we forget, Dr G had a tunnel mentioned in a previous conflict with Veii when Fidenae was the bone of contention back in the 430s or the 420s who knew when that was taking place? But definitely earlier than this. I

Dr G 34:49
think the thing to keep in mind here is that once Livy has introduced the idea of tunnels into his narrative, it's just going to keep going. So. Once we have this concept of tunnels being used for military purposes, everybody gets excited, and now you can use them all the time. It seems challenging. Like Veii is a city that is sitting in a reasonably hilly area. It is a volcanic area. It gets its water not just from the nearby river, but also from the spring systems, which are endemic in this region of Italy because of the volcanic activity. So there is a lot of natural sort of water courses that are happening underground. You could follow some of them potentially and open them up more. That might be a way to build some tunnels, but it does seem like a tricky business. I'm not saying that the Romans aren't capable of it, but I do have some questions, and I'm not sure that we've seen archeologically that there's any evidence for tunnels underneath they although I'm happy to stand corrected, please atroccologists, get in touch with us and help us out with this thorny question of the siege of Veiiand the tunnels that are apparently associated

Dr Rad 36:04
with it. Well, I can't class myself as an Etruscanologist. However, it is possible, as you've said, that this seems to be part of the narrative in multiple ways. And we know that there is actually some sort of tunnel with the Alban Lake situation. So there is some proof there. It's possible that, obviously this became an older part of the story, that people like the analysts and then Livy had to weave the narrative around it and incorporate it somehow. It is an entirely out of the question, because we know that the Greeks did use siege mines. So for example, there is one used at the siege of platea by the plateans. So that does happen. We do also know that there are these things, these cuniculi, which are drainage tunnels, which are found throughout the landscape in this area. It is possible that rather than, say, digging it, which, as you say, might be tough, maybe the Romans found a drainage tunnel that had been blocked up or closed off, and they just emptied it, and that's what they were doing. However you are quite right. I believe that at the moment, we haven't found one where you might expect to find one. So there definitely are some questions about this, but I don't want to discredit Camillus, because the Romans certainly think he is the ants pants.

Dr G 37:32
Yes, I was going to

Dr Rad 37:34
say the bee's knees. Yeah, as you say, it's all very quickly turned around. You know, Camillus can tell that victory is near because of his genius digging program. They're digging for victory.

Dr G 37:48
They're digging, yeah,

Dr Rad 37:51
and he knows that he is getting very close to being able to seize they. And he also understands just what this will mean for Rome. This is such a big deal. They is really their only big competitor in this region, as we've talked about, in spite of the political reasons that we're given for this conflict, there's an awful lot of other stuff at stake here too. So Camillus knows that this is going to be really, really big. In fact, he's expecting that there will be more booty in the capture of a wealthy Etruscan city like they then. The Romans have perhaps ever captured before, if you put everything that they've done all together,

Dr G 38:25
especially considering they're often like just exchanging booty and finding refining their sandals that they lost last time, this would be a chance to actually acquire new stuff.

Dr Rad 38:35
I'm telling you, you know, laundry markers could have changed everything for them. Now, thinking ahead, because Camillus is a planner, as we know. He's no titanius organucius. He's worried about, what is he gonna do with all this booty? What are you gonna do with all that junk, all that junk inside your trunk?

Dr G 38:54
That's a good question. What is he gonna do? Well,

Dr Rad 38:57
he understands that the soldiers might turn against him if he's not seen as being generous enough to them with this booty. So there's obviously an expectation that, given that they have put aside their weekend plans to help him conquer they there is an expectation that they will be rewarded for their efforts. However, the Senate might be angry if he's too generous to the average soldier. Now I should say Livy actually says the fathers, but as we know, he uses these terms very interchangeably, so I'm presuming he means the Senate, because he immediately writes to the Senate and says, Look, victory is getting near. It's going to be amazing. What should I do with all the stuff that I'm about to capture so brilliantly? The Senate had different opinions, and this is where we get into my favorite part of this narrative. We go back to our friend old puble. Licinius calvis, Oh, Mr. Moderate himself, all right, Mr. Moderate himself, who was apparently too old to be magistrate, and yet his son says to him, Dad, I want you to take the floor. Hmm, why would this happen? You ask good question. Dr, G, there is absolutely no reason why this would happen. It would be extremely odd for someone who is not a magistrate and a plebeian to boot, randomly be asked to be the first to speak on such an important matter over all the patrician senators who apparently are staring daggers at him right now. Why is he considered so senior in the Roman state right now that after being the first plebeian military Tribune with consular power, after coming out of nowhere in 400 all of a sudden, four years later, he gets elected without running for office when he doesn't want to do it. He's like, Oh, take my son. And everyone's like, Yeah, cool. And then in a moment of great, important public debate, and his son's like, Dad, I want to hear from you. Everyone's totally fine with this look. I

Dr G 41:12
think I am incredulous, and I hear the incredulity in your voice as well. So I think we're on a similar sort of emotional wavelength here. But I also wonder about the nature of what characterizes the Senate, because this is true. Age is definitely a huge factor. Of considerable years

Dr Rad 41:36
old and his memory's going asides going exactly

Dr G 41:38
this is guy's bit deaf, having trouble seeing doesn't seem like he's up to the gig. Is old enough that he feels like he should nominate his son to do most of the work. But when push comes to shove, his son is like, actually, I think my dad needs to take the floor and have something to say. There is a very conservative tradition amongst the senators about who gets to speak and when. Sure, and we know a lot of that from later periods of history, not so much this period. But if this group of fathers, which for so long we just assumed was all patrician, but as it has turned out now, seems to have always had at least one Levy.

Dr Rad 42:23
It's this guy and his family the whole time, the

Dr G 42:28
whole time, maybe they've been there for a while. So he may actually be in a position of quite seniority within the context of the Senate itself, and often asking the oldest to speak first is less about monetary capacity or other ways that you might measure somebody's worth within the context of Roman society, and is actually that idea of the fathers and the wisdom that comes from your elders. And potentially, this is what's going on for calvis In this moment, where they're like, he is really old. Maybe he's got something to say.

Dr Rad 43:08
Look, I hear what you're saying. I totally get it. You're right. He is very elderly. But the idea that there aren't equally old patricians who I mean, think about all the times we read out the list of magistrates and we're like, oh yeah, this guy's had about eight. You know, I just find it hard to believe that the one military tribuneship With consular power that he's held somehow makes him outrank everyone else. Just considering that we had not heard of this guy up until a few episodes ago. It just seems so funny. And again, it kind of indicates that Livy must be leaning on Licinius Macer or Macer, depending on your preference, as a source who wrote about his family's achievements when he was writing his work. So I just kind of feel like that maybe has something to do with it. On top of which, as we said last time, most of our sources, apart from Livy, agree that the dad is the one who's the magistrate. So this would indicate that if he's the one who's speaking first, he's speaking, because he's an old magistrate in power. That would make sense this whole idea that his son held the office in his place. And then thought, You know what, this is my moment to shine, but Dad,