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circa 390 BCE (some modern historians favor circa 387 BCE)Primary source · 2 sourcesDebated

Brennus and the Gauls Burn Rome, Leave Only the Capitoline Standing

On the timeline · around circa 390 BCE (some modern historians favor circa 387 BCE) · The RepublicThe Roman KingdomThe RepublicBrennus and the Gauls Burn Rome, Leave Only the Capitoline Standing500 BCE475 BCE450 BCE425 BCE400 BCE375 BCE350 BCE325 BCE300 BCE275 BCE

What happened

A force of Senones Gauls under a chieftain named Brennus invaded from northern Italy and met a Roman army at the Allia river, roughly 11 miles north of Rome. The Romans, heavily outnumbered, were routed so completely that soldiers were reportedly cut down from behind as they fled rather than killed in the fighting itself. Brennus then marched on Rome and occupied the city with little resistance. Only a small band of defenders who had fortified themselves on the Capitoline Hill held out, forcing a siege rather than a clean conquest. As the siege dragged on, famine struck both sides, and disease killed off the Gauls encamped in the low-lying ground so badly that the burial site was afterward remembered as the Busta Gallica, the Gallic pyre.

Why it matters

Rome eventually bought the Gauls off, agreeing to 1,000 pounds of gold as ransom, according to Livy. During the weighing, the Romans objected that the Gauls' weights were rigged, and Brennus is said to have thrown his own sword onto the scale and declared vae victis, woe to the conquered, meaning the losers don't get to complain about the terms. That humiliation became one of the most repeated stories in Roman collective memory, and modern historians point to the sack of Rome as a formative trauma behind Rome's later obsession with city walls, military readiness, and its long fear of Gauls and other northern peoples. Livy's account adds that the dictator Camillus arrived before the ransom was fully paid and cancelled the deal by defeating the Gauls instead, though many historians view this dramatic reversal as a later patriotic addition softening the humiliation of paying ransom at all.

How we know

The fullest account is Livy's, written more than three and a half centuries after the events, drawing on earlier Roman annalists whose own reliability for this period is unclear. Modern historians treat the broad outline, a Gallic victory at the Allia, the occupation and burning of Rome, and a ransom paid in gold, as plausible, but treat specific dramatic details, including the exact vae victis exchange and Camillus's last-minute rescue, as likely later literary embellishment rather than settled fact, and archaeological work has also raised doubts about how total the burning described by Livy actually was.

Sources

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Part of a timelineAncient Rome30 events · From a legendary fratricide on the Palatine Hill to a teenage emperor's quiet deposition twelve centuries later, told through the battles, plagues, and one bridge-crossing that ended a republic.View all →
Brennus and the Gauls Burn Rome, Leave Only the Capitoline Standing · Ancient Rome · SourcedStory