--namely, half a pound of corn
and five ounces in weight of wine. As for the real defenders of Rome,
the geese of the Capitol, they were ever after held in the highest honor
and veneration.

As the Capitol could not be taken by assault or surprise, there
remained only the slow process of siege. For six or eight months the
Gauls blockaded the hill. So says the story, but it was probably not so
long. However, in the end the Romans were brought to the point of
famine, and offered to ransom their city by paying a large sum of gold.
Brennus, the Gaulish king, was ready to accept the offer. His men were
suffering from the Roman fever; food had grown scarce; he agreed, if
paid a thousand pounds' weight of gold, to withdraw his army from Rome.

Much gold had been brought by the fugitive patricians into the Capitol.
From this the delegates brought down and placed in the scales a
sufficient quantity. But while they found the gold, the Gauls found the
weights, and it was soon discovered that the wily barbarians were
cheating. Their weights were too heavy. Complaint of this fraud was made
by the Roman tribune of the soldiers. In reply Brennus drew his heavy
broadsword and threw it into the scale with the weights.

"What does this mean?" asked the tribune.

"It means," answered the barbarian, haughtily, "woe to the vanquished!"
"_Vae victis esse!_"

While this was going on, says the legend, Camillus, the dictator, was
marching to Rome with the legions he had organized at Veii. He appeared
at the right minute for the dramatic interest of the story, entered the
Forum while the gold was being weighed, bade the Romans take back their
gold, threw the weights to the Gauls, and told Brennus proudly that it
was the Roman custom to pay their debts in iron, not in gold.

A fight ensued, as might be expected. The Gauls were driven from the
city. The next day Camillus attacked them in their camp, eight miles
from Rome, and defeated them so utterly that not a man was left alive to
carry home the tale of the slaughter.

This story of the coming of Camillus is too much like the last act of a
stage-play, or the denouement of a novel, to be true. Most likely the
Gauls marched off with their gold, though they may have been attacked on
their retreat, and most or all of the gold regained.

Camillus, however, is said to have saved Rome in still another way. The
old city was in ashes. Most of the citizens were at Veii, where they had
found or bu