Religion in ancient Rome
Religion in Ancient Rome includes the ancestral ethnic religion of the city of Rome that the Romans used to define themselves as a people, as well as the religious practices of peoples brought under Roman rule, in so far as they became followed in Rome and Italy. The Romans thought of themselves as religious, attributed their success as a world power to their collective piety in maintaining good relations with the gods; the Romans are known for the great number of deities they honored, a capacity that earned the mockery of early Christian polemicists. The presence of Greeks on the Italian peninsula from the beginning of the historical period influenced Roman culture, introducing some religious practices that became as fundamental as the cult of Apollo; the Romans looked for common ground between their major gods and those of the Greeks, adapting Greek myths and iconography for Latin literature and Roman art, as the Etruscans had. Etruscan religion was a major influence on the practice of augury.
According to legends, most of Rome's religious institutions could be traced to its founders Numa Pompilius, the Sabine second king of Rome, who negotiated directly with the gods. This archaic religion was the foundation of the mos maiorum, "the way of the ancestors" or "tradition", viewed as central to Roman identity. Roman religion was practical and contractual, based on the principle of do ut des, "I give that you might give". Religion depended on knowledge and the correct practice of prayer and sacrifice, not on faith or dogma, although Latin literature preserves learned speculation on the nature of the divine and its relation to human affairs; the most skeptical among Rome's intellectual elite such as Cicero, an augur, saw religion as a source of social order. As the Roman Empire expanded, migrants to the capital brought their local cults, many of which became popular among Italians. Christianity was in the end the most successful of these, in 380 became the official state religion. For ordinary Romans, religion was a part of daily life.
Each home had a household shrine at which prayers and libations to the family's domestic deities were offered. Neighborhood shrines and sacred places such as springs and groves dotted the city; the Roman calendar was structured around religious observances. Women and children all participated in a range of religious activities; some public rituals could be conducted only by women, women formed what is Rome's most famous priesthood, the state-supported Vestals, who tended Rome's sacred hearth for centuries, until disbanded under Christian domination. The priesthoods of public religion were held by members of the elite classes. There was no principle analogous to separation of state in ancient Rome. During the Roman Republic, the same men who were elected public officials might serve as augurs and pontiffs. Priests married, raised families, led politically active lives. Julius Caesar became pontifex maximus; the augurs read the will of the gods and supervised the marking of boundaries as a reflection of universal order, thus sanctioning Roman expansionism as a matter of divine destiny.
The Roman triumph was at its core a religious procession in which the victorious general displayed his piety and his willingness to serve the public good by dedicating a portion of his spoils to the gods Jupiter, who embodied just rule. As a result of the Punic Wars, when Rome struggled to establish itself as a dominant power, many new temples were built by magistrates in fulfillment of a vow to a deity for assuring their military success; as the Romans extended their dominance throughout the Mediterranean world, their policy in general was to absorb the deities and cults of other peoples rather than try to eradicate them, since they believed that preserving tradition promoted social stability. One way that Rome incorporated diverse peoples was by supporting their religious heritage, building temples to local deities that framed their theology within the hierarchy of Roman religion. Inscriptions throughout the Empire record the side-by-side worship of local and Roman deities, including dedications made by Romans to local gods.
By the height of the Empire, numerous international deities were cultivated at Rome and had been carried to the most remote provinces, among them Cybele, Isis and gods of solar monism such as Mithras and Sol Invictus, found as far north as Roman Britain. Foreign religions attracted devotees among Romans, who had ancestry from elsewhere in the Empire. Imported mystery religions, which offered initiates salvation in the afterlife, were a matter of personal choice for an individual, practiced in addition to carrying on one's family rites and participating in public religion; the mysteries, involved exclusive oaths and secrecy, conditions that conservative Romans viewed with suspicion as characteristic of "magic", conspiratorial, or subversive activity. Sporadic and sometimes brutal attempts were made to suppress religionists who seemed to threaten traditional morality and unity, as with the senate's efforts to restrict the Bacchanals in 186 BC; because Romans had never been obligated to cultivate one god or one cult only, religious tolerance was not an issue in the sense that it is for competing monotheistic systems.
The monotheistic rigor of Judaism posed difficulties for Roman policy that led at times to compromise and the granting of special exemptions, but sometimes to intractable conflict. For example, religious disputes helped cause the First Jewish -- the Bar Kokhba revolt. In the wake of the Republic's collapse, state religion had adapted to support the new reg
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Three centuries after the Late Bronze Age collapse of Mycenaean Greece, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and colonization of the Mediterranean Basin; this was followed by the period of Classical Greece, an era that began with the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting from the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Due to the conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedon, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the western end of the Mediterranean Sea; the Hellenistic period came to an end with the conquests and annexations of the eastern Mediterranean world by the Roman Republic, which established the Roman province of Macedonia in Roman Greece, the province of Achaea during the Roman Empire. Classical Greek culture philosophy, had a powerful influence on ancient Rome, which carried a version of it to many parts of the Mediterranean Basin and Europe.
For this reason, Classical Greece is considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Classical Greek culture gave great importance to knowledge. Science and religion were not separate and getting closer to the truth meant getting closer to the gods. In this context, they understood the importance of mathematics as an instrument for obtaining more reliable knowledge. Greek culture, in a few centuries and with a limited population, managed to explore and make progress in many fields of science, mathematics and knowledge in general. Classical antiquity in the Mediterranean region is considered to have begun in the 8th century BC and ended in the 6th century AD. Classical antiquity in Greece was preceded by the Greek Dark Ages, archaeologically characterised by the protogeometric and geometric styles of designs on pottery. Following the Dark Ages was the Archaic Period, beginning around the 8th century BC.
The Archaic Period saw early developments in Greek culture and society which formed the basis for the Classical Period. After the Archaic Period, the Classical Period in Greece is conventionally considered to have lasted from the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 until the death of Alexander the Great in 323; the period is characterized by a style, considered by observers to be exemplary, i.e. "classical", as shown in the Parthenon, for instance. Politically, the Classical Period was dominated by Athens and the Delian League during the 5th century, but displaced by Spartan hegemony during the early 4th century BC, before power shifted to Thebes and the Boeotian League and to the League of Corinth led by Macedon; this period saw the Greco-Persian Wars and the Rise of Macedon. Following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period, during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near and Middle East; this period ends with the Roman conquest. Roman Greece is considered to be the period between Roman victory over the Corinthians at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC and the establishment of Byzantium by Constantine as the capital of the Roman Empire in AD 330.
Late Antiquity refers to the period of Christianization during the 4th to early 6th centuries AD, sometimes taken to be complete with the closure of the Academy of Athens by Justinian I in 529. The historical period of ancient Greece is unique in world history as the first period attested directly in proper historiography, while earlier ancient history or proto-history is known by much more circumstantial evidence, such as annals or king lists, pragmatic epigraphy. Herodotus is known as the "father of history": his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Written between the 450s and 420s BC, Herodotus' work reaches about a century into the past, discussing 6th century historical figures such as Darius I of Persia, Cambyses II and Psamtik III, alluding to some 8th century ones such as Candaules. Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Demosthenes and Aristotle. Most of these authors were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than those of many other cities.
Their scope is further limited by a focus on political and diplomatic history, ignoring economic and social history. In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization. Literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. Objects with Phoenician writing on them may have been available in Greece from the 9th century BC, but the earliest evidence of Greek writing comes from graffiti on Greek pottery from the mid-8th century. Greece was divided into many small self-governing communities, a pattern dictated by Greek geography: every island and plain is cut off from its neighbors by the sea or mountain ranges; the Lelantine War is the earliest documented war of the ancient Greek period. It was fought between the important poleis of Chalcis and Eretria over the fertile Lelantine plain of Euboea. Both cities seem to have suffered a decline as result of the long war, though Chalcis was the nominal victor.
A mercantile class arose in the first half of the 7th century BC, shown by the introduction of coinage in about 680 BC. This
Campania
Campania is a region in Southern Italy. As of 2018, the region has a population of around 5,820,000 people, making it the third-most-populous region of Italy. Located on the Italian Peninsula, with the Mediterranean Sea to the west, it includes the small Phlegraean Islands and Capri for administration as part of the region. Campania was part of Magna Græcia. During the Roman era, the area maintained a Greco-Roman culture; the capital city of Campania is Naples. Campania is rich in culture in regard to gastronomy, architecture and ancient sites such as Pompeii, Oplontis, Aeclanum and Velia; the name of Campania itself is derived from Latin, as the Romans knew the region as Campania felix, which translates into English as "fertile countryside" or "happy countryside". The rich natural sights of Campania make it important in the tourism industry along the Amalfi Coast, Mount Vesuvius and the island of Capri; the original inhabitants of Campania were three defined groups of the Ancient peoples of Italy, who all spoke the Oscan language, part of the Italic family.
During the 8th century BC, people from Euboea in Greece, known as Cumaeans, began to establish colonies in the area around the modern day province of Naples. Another Oscan tribe, the Samnites, moved down from central Italy into Campania. Since the Samnites were more warlike than the Campanians, they took over the cities of Capua and Cumae, in an area, one of the most prosperous and fertile in the Italian Peninsula at the time. During the 340s BC, the Samnites were engaged in a war with the Roman Republic in a dispute known as the Samnite Wars, with the Romans securing rich pastures of northern Campania during the First Samnite War; the major remaining independent Greek settlement was Neapolis, when the town was captured by the Samnites, the Neapolitans were left with no other option than to call on the Romans, with whom they established an alliance, setting off the Second Samnite War. The Roman consul Quintus Publilius Filo recaptured Neapolis by 326 BC and allowed it to remain a Greek city with some autonomy as a civitas foederata while aligned with Rome.
The Second Samnite War ended with the Romans controlling southern Campania and additional regions further to the south. Campania was a full-fledged part of the Roman Republic by the end of the 4th century BC, valued for its pastures and rich countryside, its Greek language and customs made it a centre of Hellenistic civilization, creating the first traces of Greco-Roman culture. During the Pyrrhic War the battle took place in Campania at Maleventum in which the Romans, led by consul Curius Dentatus, were victorious, they renamed the city Beneventum, which grew in stature until it was second only to Capua in southern Italy. During the Second Punic War in 216 BC, Capua, in a bid for equality with Rome, allied with Carthage; the rebellious Capuans were isolated from the rest of Campania. Naples resisted Hannibal due to the imposing walls. Capua was starved into submission in the Roman retaking of 211 BC, the Romans were victorious; the rest of Campania, with the exception of Naples, adopted the Latin language as official and was Romanised.
As part of the Roman Empire, with Latium, formed the most important region of the Augustan divisions of Italia. In ancient times Misenum, at the extreme northern end of the bay of Naples, was the largest base of the Roman navy, since its port was the base of the Classis Misenensis, the most important Roman fleet, it was first established as a naval base in 27 BC by Marcus Agrippa, the right-hand man of the emperor Augustus. Roman Emperors chose Campania as a holiday destination, among them Claudius and Tiberius, the latter of whom is infamously linked to the island of Capri, it was during this period that Christianity came to Campania. Two of the apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, are said to have preached in the city of Naples, there were several martyrs during this time; the period of relative calm was violently interrupted by the epic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 which buried the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. With the Decline of the Roman Empire, its last emperor, Romulus Augustus, was put in a manor house prison near Castel dell'Ovo, Naples, in 476, ushering in the beginning of the Middle Ages and a period of uncertainty in regard to the future of the area.
The area had many duchies and principalities during the Middle Ages, in the hands of the Byzantine Empire and the Lombards. Under the Normans, the smaller independent states were brought together as part of the Kingdom of Sicily, before the mainland broke away to form the Kingdom of Naples, it was during this period that elements of Spanish and Aragonese culture were introduced to Campania. After a period as a Norman kingdom, the Kingdom of Sicily passed to the Hohenstaufens, who were a powerful Germanic royal house of Swabian origins; the University of Naples Federico II was founded by Frederick II in the city, the oldest state university in the world, making Naples the intellectual centre of the kingdom. Conflict between the Hohenstaufen house and the Papacy, led in 1266 to Pope Innocent IV crowning Angevin Dynasty duke Charles I as the king. Charles moved the capital from Palermo to Naples where he resided at the Castel Nuovo. During this period, much Gothic architec
Ab Urbe Condita Libri
The book History of Rome, sometimes referred to as Ab Urbe Condita, is a monumental history of ancient Rome, written in Latin between 27 and 9 BC by the historian Titus Livius, or "Livy", as he is known in English. The work covers the period from the legends concerning the arrival of Aeneas and the refugees from the fall of Troy, to the city's founding in 753, the expulsion of the Kings in 509, down to Livy's own time, during the reign of the emperor Augustus; the last event covered by Livy is the death of Drusus in 9 BC. About 25% of the work survives; the History of Rome comprised 142 "books", thirty-five of which—Books 1–10 with the Preface and Books 21–45—still exist in reasonably complete form. Damage to a manuscript of the 5th century resulted in large gaps in Books 41 and 43–45. A fragmentary palimpsest of the 91st book was discovered in the Vatican Library in 1772, containing about a thousand words, several papyrus fragments of unknown material, much smaller, have been found in Egypt since 1900, most about 40 words from Book 11, unearthed in 1986.
Some passages are known thanks to quotes from ancient authors, the most famous being on the death of Cicero, quoted by Seneca the Elder. Livy was abridged, in antiquity, to an epitome, which survives for Book 1, but was itself abridged in the fourth century into the so-called Periochae, a list of contents; the Periochae survive for the entire work, except for books 136 and 137. In Oxyrhynchus, a similar summary of books 37–40 and 48–55 was found on a roll of papyrus, now in the British Museum classified as P. Oxy. IV 0668. There is another fragment, named P. Oxy. XI 1379, which represents a passage from the first book and that shows a high level of correctness; however the Oxyrhynchus Epitome is incomplete. The entire work covers the following periods:Books 1–5 – The legendary founding of Rome, the period of the kings, the early republic down to its conquest by the Gauls in 390 BC. Books 6–10 – Wars with the Aequi, Volsci and Samnites, down to 292 BC. Books 11–20 – The period from 292 to 218, including the First Punic War.
Books 21–30 – The Second Punic War, from 218 to 202. Books 31–45 – The Macedonian and other eastern wars from 201 to 167. Books 46 to 142 are all lost: Books 46–70 – The period from 167 to the outbreak of the Social War in 91. Books 71–90 – The civil wars between Marius and Sulla, to the death of Sulla in 78. Books 91–108 – From 78 BC through the end of the Gallic War, in 50. Books 109–116 – From the Civil War to the death of Caesar. Books 117-133 – The wars of the triumvirs down to the death of Antonius. Books 134-142 – The rule of Augustus down to the death of Drusus; the first book has been one of the most significant sources of the various accounts of the traditional legend of Romulus and Remus. His version of the legend is told in chapters 3-7 of the first book. Livy states. Procas, her grandfather had willed the throne to his son Numitor but he was deposed by her uncle, Amulius, she was forced to take the Vestal oath to prevent her from producing a rival to his rule. She became pregnant after taking her vows and claimed that she had been raped by Mars, the Roman god of war.
Livy speculates. She was imprisoned by King Amulius and he ordered the newborn twins to be cast into the River Tiber, they were instead left by the swollen banks of the river, when the waters subsided, a she-wolf found them and suckled them until they were found and adopted by a shepherd named Faustulus and his wife Laurentia. He mentions, without attribution, a claim that Larentia was in fact a prostitute who serviced Faustulus and the other shepherds; the she-wolf tale arose from the slang word for her profession. They grow up strong, braving wild bandits along the way. In his account of the conflict with Amulius, Livy states that Faustulus had always known that the boys had been abandoned by the order of the king and had hoped that they were of Royal blood. On their way to celebrate the Lupercalia, the twins were ambushed by some of the thieves they had driven off. After a struggle, Remus was captured; the thieves accused him of stealing from Numitor's land. He was handed over to the former king, his grandfather—unbeknownst to either at the time—for punishment.
With Remus a captive, Faustulus told Romulus the truth of the twins’ origin. Meanwhile, encountering his grandson for the first time since infancy—a grandson whom he had thought long dead—looked favorably upon his royal demeanor and physicality, he realized the truth of who Remus and his twin brother Romulus were. Romulus and the other shepherds traveled separately to the city and converged with Remus and Numitor's supporters at the palace, where they killed Amulius. Seizing the moment, Numitor called for an assembly to regain his crown, he made public the ordeal of the twins and announced the death of Amulius, claiming he had given the order to kill him. To help boost their grandfather's effort to regain his throne, the twins marched their men into the center of the assembly and proclaimed him king; the people followed Numitor was once again king of the Alban kingdom. Inspired, the twins set out to build their own city; the twins began to argue immediately after starting out on their undertaking.
According to Livy, both wanted to be the king of their new city. H
Satricum
Satricum, an ancient town of Latium, lay on the right bank of the Astura river some 60 kilometres SE of Rome in a low-lying region south of the Alban Hills, at the NW border of the Pontine Marshes. It was directly accessible from Rome via a road running parallel to the Via Appia. According to Livy, Satricum was an Alban colony, a member of the Latin League of 499 BC. In c. 488 BC it was taken by the Volsci. In 386 BC a force made up of Volscians of the town of Antium and Latins rebelled against Rome and gathered near Satricum. After a battle with the Romans, stopped by rain, the Latins and Hernici left and returned home; the Volsci retreated to Satricum, taken by storm. In 385 BC the Romans planted a colony with 2000 colonists at Satricum. In 382 BC a joint force of Volsci and Latins from the city of Praeneste took Satricum despite strong resistance by the Roman colonists. In 381 BC the Romans marched on Satricum. There was a fierce battle. In 377 BC a joint Latin and Volscian force encamped near Satricum.
It was fled to Antium. A quarrel broke out between the Antiates and the Latins; the former were minded to give up, while the latter left. The Antiates surrendered their city and lands; the Latins burned Satricum in revenge. In 348 BC the Volsci rebuilt the city. 346 BC Antium sent envoys to the cities of the Latins to try to stir a war. The Romans attacked Satricum, they defeated an army of Antiates and other Volsci, levied in advance. These fled to Satricum; the Romans besieged this town and 4000 of the enemy surrendered. The town was burnt; the temple of Mater Matuta was spared a second time. After this, we hear of this town only in connection with the temple of Mater Matuta. Antonio Nibby mistakenly identified ancient Satricum with the low hill at Borgo Montello known as the Tenuta di Conca, surrounded by tufa cliffs, 1.5 km ESE of present-day Le Ferriere, on which were still scanty remains of walling in rectangular blocks of the same material. In 1896, the hill above Le Ferriere yielded remains of an archaic and early Classical sanctuary ascribed to Mater Matuta, during excavations begun under the direction of Prof. H. Graillot of the University of Bordeaux, member of the French School of Rome.
After two weeks, this work was suspended by order of the Italian government, resumed under the supervision of Felice Barnabei, Raniero Mengarelli, A. Cozza; the objects discovered. After some cursory investigations during the 1950s, the site of Satricum was brought to light again in 1977, as a result of a concerted effort by the Italian authorities to rescue the antiquities in the Roman campagna that were acutely threatened by large-scale urbanisation and agricultural reform; the alarm was first made public by the exhibition Civiltà del Lazio primitivo at Rome. As a result, the Royal Dutch Institute at Rome was invited by the Comitato per l'Archeologia laziale to participate in a rescue project and to ascertain the state of preservation of the site. Since 1977, a comprehensive research program at the site has been carried out through annual excavation and study campaigns; this concerned, first of all, activities by the Royal Dutch Institute at Rome joined by the Universities of Groningen and Nijmegen.
As of 1990, the project is being executed by the University of Amsterdam alone, under the direction of prof. Marijke Gnade. Several inscriptions bearing the name of Mater Matuta have now made undisputed the identification of the city on and around the acropolis directly to the south of today's Le Ferriere with ancient Satricum. There remains, some discussion on the equation, proposed by C. M. Stibbe, of Satricum with the legendary city of Suessa Pometia; the sanctuary on top op the acropolis was re-excavated in 1978-1981. Metrological analyses by Prof. J. de Waele, published in 1981 convincingly demonstrated a succession of three building phases dated from the late 7th to the early 5th century BC. Further investigations in the subsoil showed a large, rather isolated hut to have preceded them with a religious function. Evidence for a large number of other huts of various shapes testify to a concentrated use of the acropolis during Latial periods II-IV; the three temples succeeding one another are characterized by Etrusco-Ionian and central-Italic traditions in material and artistic background, evidencing the character of Satricum as a true crossroads of regionally competing, or successive, cultures.
The discovery, in 1977, of the Lapis Satricanus re-used in the foundations of the last temple and bore the name Publius Valerius confirms to the political connections between Satricum and Republican Rome. The Archaic Period at Satricum is evidenced by a number of large courtyard buildings on and at the foot of the acropolis. To the NE, a network of large roads, amongst which a "Sacra Via", in combination with a dense urban build-up have been traced, documenting various phases from the 6th to 4th century BC. Among the more surprising recent findings is a large necropolis dated to the 5th and 4th century BC, within the agger in the SW corner of the Archaic city; the material culture of the populace buried here, yielding i.a. A rare inscription on a lead miniature axe bearing the inscription iukus|ko|efiei, shows strong connections with indigenous, Volscian traditions best known from the interior regions of the Apennine Peninsula. In fact, the discovery corroborates the historical traditio
Marcus Furius Camillus
Marcus Furius Camillus was a Roman soldier and statesman of patrician descent. According to Livy and Plutarch, Camillus triumphed four times, was five times dictator, was honoured with the title of Second Founder of Rome. Camillus belonged to the lineage of the Furii Camilli, whose origin had been in the Latin city of Tusculum. Although this city had been a bitter enemy of the Romans in the 490s BC, after both the Volsci and Aequi began to wage war against Rome, Tusculum joined Rome, unlike most Latin cities. Soon, the Furii integrated into Roman society, thus the Furii had become an important Roman family by the 450s. The father of Camillus was a patrician tribune of consular powers. Camillus had more than three brothers: the eldest one was Lucius junior, both consul and tribune of consular powers; the Latin noun camillus denoted a child acolyte at religious rituals. During Camillus's infancy, his relative Quintus Furius Paculus was the Roman Pontifex Maximus. The'military tribunes with consular authority' or consular tribunes, were tribunes elected with consular power during the so-called Conflict of the Orders in the Roman Republic.
Consular tribunes served in 444 BC and continuously from 408 BC to 394 BC and again from 391 BC to 367 BC. The office was created, along with the magistracy of the censor, in order to give the plebeian order access to higher levels of government without having to reform the office of consul. At that time in Rome's history, plebeians could not be elected to the highest magistracy of Consul, whereas they could be elected to the office of consular tribune. Camillus had been a noteworthy soldier in the wars with the Volsci. Subsequently, Camillus was a military tribune. In 403 BC, he was appointed censor with Marcus Postumius Albinus Regillensis and, by means of extensive taxation, took action to solve financial problems resulting from incessant military campaigns. In 406 BC, Rome declared war against the rival Etrurian city of Veii; the city of Veii was located on a well-fortified and elevated site. This required the Romans to commence a siege lasting several years. In 401 BC, as the war started to grow unpopular in Rome, Camillus was appointed consular tribune.
He assumed command of the Roman army, within a short time he stormed two allies of Veii and Capena, which resisted behind their walls. In 398 BC, Camillus received consular tribune powers and looted Capena; when Rome suffered severe defeats in 396 BC, the tenth year of this war, the Romans resorted again to Camillus, named dictator for the first time. After defeating both Falerii and Capena at Nepete, Camillus commanded the final strike against Veii, he dug the soft ground below the walls and the Romans infiltrated through the city's sewage system defeating the enemy. Not interested in capitulation terms, but in Veii's complete destruction, the Romans slaughtered the entire adult male population and made slaves of all the women and children; the plunder was large. For the battle, Camillus had invoked the protection of Mater Matuta extensively, he looted the statue of Juno for Rome. Back in Rome, Camillus paraded on a quadriga, a four-horse chariot, the popular celebrations lasted four days. Plutarch wrote of this: Camillus... assumed more to himself than became a civil and legal magistrate.
This alienated the hearts of his fellow-citizens, who were not accustomed to such display. Camillus opposed the plebeian plan to populate Veii with half of the Romans, it would have resolved the poverty issues. Deliberately, Camillus protracted the project until its abandonment. Camillus rendered himself controversial in not fulfilling his promise to dedicate a tenth of the plunder to Delphi for the god Apollo; the Roman soothsayers announced that the gods were displeased by this, so the Senate charged the citizens and the sought amounts of gold were retrieved. To finish Falerii, the last surviving enemy of this war, Camillus was made consular tribune again in 394 BC, he seized the opportunity to divert the bitter conflict between Roman social classes into a unifying external conflict. He besieged Falerii and, after he rejected as immoral the proposal of a local school teacher who had surrendered most of the local children to the Romans, the people of Falerii were moved to gratitude, made peace with Rome.
The entire Italian Peninsula was impressed by the Roman victories of Camillus. Aequi and Capena proposed peace treaties. Rome increased its territory by seventy percent and some of the land was distributed to needy citizens. Rome had become the most powerful nation of the central peninsula; the Romans were restive. Furthermore, Camillus rejected both the land redistribution and the uncontrolled Roman population of Veii, he was impeached by his political adversaries, by an accusation of embezzlement of the Etruscan plunder. To Camillus, his friends explained that, although the condemnation seemed unavoidable, they would help to pay the fine. Camillus spurned this, he abandoned Rome with his wife and Lucius, his surviving son, went to Ardea. In his absence, Camillus was condemned to pay 1,500 denarii; the Gauls, who had invaded most of Etruria, reached Clusium and its people turned to Rome for help. However, the Roma
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). 
