tion of the senate and the curies. This was quite in
the spirit of the ancient times. If the curies had interdicted him _aqua
et igni_, they alone could recall him, if they previously obtained a
resolution of the senate authorizing them to do so; but if he had gone
into voluntary exile, and had given up his Roman franchise by becoming a
citizen of Ardea before a sentence had been passed upon him by the
centuries, it was again in the power of the curies alone, he being a
patrician, to recall him as a citizen; and otherwise he could not have
become dictator, nor could he have regarded himself as such.

It was the time of the dog-days when the Gauls came to Rome, and as the
summer at Rome is always pestilential, especially during the two months
and a half before the first of September, the unavoidable consequence
must have been, as Livy relates, that the barbarians, bivouacking on the
ruins of the city in the open air, were attacked by disease and carried
off, like the army of Frederick Barbarossa when encamped before the
castle of St. Angelo. The whole army of the Gauls, however, was not in
the city, but only as many as were necessary to blockade the garrison of
the Capitol; the rest were scattered far and wide over the face of the
country, and were ravaging all the unprotected places and isolated farms
in Latium; many an ancient town, which is no longer mentioned after this
time, may have been destroyed by the Gauls. None but fortified places
like Ostia, which could obtain supplies by sea, made a successful
resistance, for the Gauls were unacquainted with the art of besieging.

The Ardeatans, whose territory was likewise invaded by the Gauls,
opposed them, under the command of Camillus; the Etruscans would seem to
have endeavored to avail themselves of the opportunity of recovering
Veii, for we are told that the Romans at Veii, commanded by Caedicius,
gained a battle against them, and that, encouraged by this success, they
began to entertain a hope of regaining Rome, since by this victory they
got possession of arms.

A Roman of the name of Fabius Dorso is said to have offered up, in broad
daylight, a _gentilician_ sacrifice on the Quirinal; and the astonished
Gauls are said to have done him no harm--a tradition which is not
improbable.

The provisions in the Capitol were exhausted, but the Gauls themselves
being seized with epidemic diseases became tired of their conquests, and
were not inclined to settle in a countr