Who was Marcus Furius Camillus and why is he called the second founder of Rome?
Marcus Furius Camillus was a Roman statesman and general of the early republic, possibly living from around 448 to 365 BC. He was called the second founder of Rome because Roman tradition credited him with saving the city from the Gallic sack, capturing Veii, suppressing rebellions on all sides, and brokering peace between patricians and plebeians. Modern historians regard most of these achievements as legendary inventions rather than historical fact.
Did Marcus Furius Camillus really save Rome from the Gauls?
The story of Camillus driving off the Gauls at the moment a thousand pounds of gold was being weighed out as ransom is considered by R. M. Ogilvie, in his Commentary on Livy, to be one of the most daring fabrications in Roman history. Polybius, writing closer to the events, reports that the Gauls occupied Rome for some seven months and then left of their own accord to repel a Veneti invasion of their own territory.
How many times was Marcus Furius Camillus dictator?
Roman tradition held that Camillus served as dictator five times and held six consular tribunates. Modern scholars treat several of these appointments as anachronistic or wholly fictitious insertions added by later annalists, including his alleged dictatorships to suppress the sedition of Marcus Manlius Capitolinus in 384 BC and to mediate the Licinio-Sextian rogations in 368 and 367 BC.
What is the Francois Tomb and how does it relate to Camillus?
The Francois Tomb is an Etruscan burial monument built around 300 BC near Vulci. One of its wall paintings names a figure called Marce Camitlnas alongside a figure identified as Gnaeus Tarquinius the Roman. Some scholars have proposed that Camitlnas refers to Marcus Camillus, but the specific legend depicted is not known and the attribution is considered problematic.
What were the Licinio-Sextian rogations and what role did Camillus supposedly play?
The Licinio-Sextian rogations were three laws passed around 367 BC championed by the tribunes Gaius Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius Lateranus. They addressed debt relief, imposed a five-hundred-jugera limit on possession of public land, and required that one consul each year be a plebeian. Livy credits Camillus with first obstructing the laws and then brokering their passage, but a fragment of Numerius Fabius Pictor preserved in Aulus Gellius' Attic Nights shows the surrounding narrative of prolonged political blockade was a late annalistic invention.
How did the legend of Camillus connect to the emperor Augustus?
Livy's history may have been structured around a grand cycle of 360-365 years in which Romulus, Camillus, and Augustus are presented as coequal heroic figures, each the founder of a new Rome. Starting with Romulus and peaking under Servius Tullius, the first cycle ends with Camillus as second founder; the next cycle peaks under Scipio Africanus before Augustus arrives to re-found the city again.