The spoils of Veii had been claimed; the people had been sold into slavery and the conquered city had been stripped of every ornament, as vultures strip a carcass of its flesh. But even the most ravenous vultures leave bones behind, and the bones of Veii remained: its houses, walls, wells, fountains, assembly halls, streets, gardens, and temples. The houses of Veii stood empty. Veii was a city without citizens.
What was to be done with Veii?
One faction, led by a tribune of the plebs named Sicinius, argued that half the population of Roma should leave their homes and move to Veii, taking up residence in the empty houses there. Renters could become owners; men mired in debt could make a fresh start. Farmers who had been promised small homesteads in distant, conquered Volscian territory could instead receive lots outside Veii, enjoying the amenities of a city already built and living close to their family and friends in Roma. With two complete cities to accommodate the population of one, much of the disparity between the haves and have-nots of Roma could be eliminated overnight.
The supporters of Sicinius’s proposal were wildly enthusiastic, but the opposition was fierce. The landlords and moneylenders of Roma had everything to lose and nothing to gain. Those who ran the city foresaw a dilution of their authority; what if Veii became not an annex of Roma but a rival city, with its own magistrates and priesthoods? Opponents accused Sicinius of scheming to make himself rich by controlling the distribution of properties in Veii; perhaps he even intended to become king of Veii. To the opposition, the proposed migration was nothing less than another secession of the plebs—only this time, the secession would be permanent. The gods had shown favor to one city, Roma, and Roma should remain as it was. Veii should be utterly destroyed, it walls pulled down and its buildings burned to the ground.
Camillus had been among those who spoke most vehemently against the move to occupy Veii. In a speech to the Senate, he had uttered a phrase which became the rallying cry of the opposition: “Any city abandoned by the gods must never be inhabited by men!” Some said his exile was the price he paid for opposing Sicinius and his faction. They had brought charges of corruption against which Camillus had been unable to defend himself, but the real issue had been Camillus’s stand on the Veii Question.
Should Roma be one city or two? Should Veii be inhabited or destroyed? The unresolved issue overshadowed every other concern facing the city. The debate was fierce and unrelenting, and often descended to open violence in the Forum. There seemed to be no middle ground; migration either promised the solution to all problems, or threatened the annihilation of Roma. The stakes were incredibly high. No wonder Foslia had laughed at the Virgo Maxima’s quaint digression on intermarriage when the Veii Question was raised!
And yet, as Postumia had argued, all such questions were at some level related to one another. Politics split each question into many different questions, all of them vexed and insoluble: Every man asserted his own will, and whoever was strongest at a given moment prevailed. Religion unified all questions into one, to which there was a single answer: the will of the gods.
It often seemed to Pinaria that the world outside the House of the Vestals was a swirling chaos of violence and uncertainty. The enemies of Roma sought her destruction, as she sought theirs. The citizens of Roma endlessly struggled against one another for wealth and power; even within families, sons contested against one another and sometimes disobeyed their paterfamilias, and wives rebelled against their husbands. But these struggles were mere shadows of something far greater, and yet hard to see, as a temple by its vastness must be hard for an ant to discern: the will of the gods. Wisdom came not from within, or from other mortals; wisdom came from determining the desire of the gods. But how was this to be done? Even after her many years of study, the path often seemed obscure to Pinaria.
She was glad the dinner was over, and conversation had ceased; now the Vestals would make their way to the temple of the goddess for the evening’s thanksgiving. No matter how much delight the play of words gave to clever people like Foslia, or to teachers like the Virgo Maxima, talking never resolved anything. Peace came only in the performance of ritual, and the greatest peace came in those precious moments when Pinaria could gaze, uninterrupted and free from all extraneous thoughts, into the hearth-fire of Vesta, knowing it to be the one thing in all the world that was pure and everlasting.
“They are on their way! They are on their way! I must warn everyone! They are on their way!”
The madman had forced his way past the servants at the entrance of the House of the Vestals. He had rushed though the vestibule and into the atrium, where he now stood in the center of the impluvium. It was high noon and the sun shone directly down on him. When he stamped his feet in the ankle-deep water, like a child throwing a tantrum, the sunlight sparkled and lit rainbows amid the splashing water.
“They are on their way!” he cried, clenching his fists at his sides and drawing his eyebrows to a point. “Why will no one listen?”
The Vestals and their huddled servants kept their distance and watched him, fascinated. Foslia, who had just arrived, whispered in Pinaria’s ear. “Who is this creature?”
“I don’t know. But I’ve seen him before, in the street between here and the Temple of Vesta.”
“He looks like a beggar, to judge by those rags. And that awful unkempt hair and beard! Has he threatened anyone?”
“No. He seems to be trying to warn us about something. The Virgo Maxima has gone to find the Pontifex Maximus—”
“You must be joking! I should think she’d fetch some armed lictors to take the man away in chains.”
“She seemed to take him rather seriously.”
There was a commotion at the entrance. Postumia and the Pontifex Maximus appeared in the vestibule and strode into the atrium, followed by a retinue of priests and augurs.
The madman dropped to his knees with a splash. “Pontifex Maximus! At last! You will hear the truth of what I say.”
The high priest wore a toga distinctive for its many folds gathered and tucked in a loop just above his waist; the cowl that would have covered his head at ceremonies was pushed back to reveal a bald crown fringed with white hair. He stroked his long white beard and looked down his nose at the man in the impluvium. “Marcus Caedicius! How far you’ve fallen in the world—and I don’t just mean to your knees.”
“Pontifex Maximus, do you know this man?” said Postumia.
“I do. Caedicius used to be a respectable plebeian, a fuller who washed and dyed wool; observe the dark stains behind his fingernails. But some time ago he gave up his shop and became a vagrant. He frequents a particular spot in the street above the Temple of Vesta. Have you not seen him pacing this way and that, muttering to himself? Well, Caecidius, what is this nonsense? What can you be thinking, forcing your way into this sacred dwelling and terrifying the holy virgins! What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Oh, Pontifex Maximus, you must listen to me!”
“I am listening, you fool. Speak!”
“I heard a voice. I was in the street, alone—there wasn’t another mortal in sight, I swear—and a voice spoke to me, as clearly and distinctly as I’m speaking to you now. A voice from nowhere!” Caedicius wrung his hands and chewed his lower lip.
“By Hercules, man, spit it out! Do you think I have nothing better to do? What did this voice say?”
“It said: ‘The Gauls are coming!’ That’s what it said, as clearly as you hear me now: ‘The Gauls are coming!’”
The Pontifex Maximus wrinkled his brow. “The Gauls?”
One of his subordinates drew alongside him. “A tribe of savages who come from a land far to the north, Pontifex Maximus, beyond a great mountain range called the Alps. Some years ago, they discovered a pass across the Alps. Some of them moved into Italy and founded a city called Mediolanum. Poets say it was a craving for wine that drew the Gauls to Italy; in their native land they have nothing like it. Their language is said to be a combination of grunts, very uncouth and grating to the ear.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of these Gauls,” said the Pontifex Maximus. “Why should they come here, Marcus Caedicius, and why should we care?”
Caedicius splashed his hands in the shallow water, close to weeping. “The Gauls are coming! Do you not understand? Their arrival shall be terrible, the most terrible thing that has ever happened! Doom! Death! Destruction! Warn the magistrates! Flee at once, and take the Vestals with you! Pray to the gods for our salvation!”
For quite some time, a rotund little priest in the retinue behind the Pontifex Maximus had been searching through a scroll, rotating the cylinders with both hands and scanning the text. The man gave a sudden jerk, which caught Pinaria’s attention.
Foslia also noticed. She gripped Pinaria’s arm and whispered into her ear. “Do you realize what that priest is holding? It’s one of the Sibylline Books!”
“Surely not,” whispered Pinaria. “Aren’t they kept on the Capitoline, in a vault beneath the Temple of Jupiter?”
“Of course; that’s where the priests study the Greek verses, translate them into Latin, and debate their meaning. That roly-poly little fellow must be one of the priests, and that must be one of the Sibylline Books!”
“I never thought that I should ever actually see one,” said Pinaria, feeling a tremor of dread. The arcane verses were consulted only in times of dire crisis.
The priest gave another jerk and uttered a cry of excitement. “Pontifex Maximus, I’ve found something! I knew I had seen the reference before; at last I’ve located it. The Sibyl herself foresaw this moment. She wrote a verse to guide us.”
“What does it say? Read the oracle aloud.”
The little priest looked up from the scroll. He stared wide-eyed at Marcus Caecidius for a long moment, blinked and cleared his throat, and read:
A man kneels on water and does not sink. He speaks to the wise to make them think. From his warning they must not shrink.
The little priest lowered the scroll. Everyone in the room gazed at the man who knelt in the shallow water, who claimed to have heard a warning from a disembodied voice that proclaimed, “The Gauls are coming!”
Not long after Caedicius delivered his warning, word arrived that a vast army of Gauls had swept down from the north and was laying siege to the city of Clusium, located on a tributary of the Tiber, a hundred miles upriver from Roma.
The city fathers conferred. The prophecy of Caedicius and the words of the Sibyl were debated. It was decided that a delegation should be sent to Clusium to observe the Gauls at first hand. If they were as numerous as rumor asserted, and as menacing as Caedicius believed, then the envoys should attempt to use diplomacy—promises, pacts, or threats—to turn the Gauls back from Clusium, or at the very least to dissuade them from moving further south and setting their sights on Roma.
The Roman ambassadors were three brothers of the distinguished Fabius family. The Gauls received them courteously, for they had heard of Roma and knew the city was a force to be reckoned with. But when the Fabii asked what injury the Clusians had done to the Gauls that they should attack their city, and if making war unjustly was not an offense to the gods, the chieftain of the Gauls merely laughed at them. Brennus was a big-jawed man with a bristling red beard and a shaggy red mane, so massive and ruggedly muscled that he seemed to have been hewn from a block of granite. The Gauls were very nearly a race of giants, and Brennus towered over the Roman ambassadors. Even though he spoke with a kind of rough humor, it seemed to the Romans that he was belittling them.
“How have the Clusians offended us?” Brennus asked. “By having too much, while we have too little! By being so few, while we number so many! As for offending the gods, yours may be different from ours, but the law of nature is the same everywhere: The weak submit to the strong. So it is among gods, beasts, and men alike. From everything I’ve heard about you, you Romans are no different. Haven’t you done your share of taking what belongs to others, making free men into slaves simply because you’re stronger than they are and because it suits you? I thought so! So don’t ask us to pity the Clusians. Instead, maybe we should pity the people you’ve conquered and oppressed. Maybe we should go about setting them free and restoring their goods. How would you like that, Romans? What do you say? Ha!”
Brennus laughed in their faces. The Fabii were greatly insulted, but kept their mouths shut.