crucial from the Greek tradition — Troy and the first Olympiad — and recasts
them as transitions into a new, Roman, phase of history. The Gallic sack is a vital
addition to this series of watersheds. The first key fixed synchronistic point in
Timaeus and Polybius that makes it possible for Roman history to be properly con-
nected with Greek history, the Gallic sack is itself made to serve as the “beginning
of history” in Claudius Quadrigarius and Livy book 6.^205 The very event that al-
most expunged Rome altogether is the one that put the city on the world stage —
just as the destruction of Troy led to the city’s existence in the first place.^206
Ovid intuited the power of these associated watersheds of foundation and Gallic
sack, and his subtle deployment of them in the Metamorphosesis proof of their
understood significance. Before he arrives at the foundation of Rome in book 14,
he has a very small number of proleptic references to the as yet nonexistent city.
Book 1 contains two forward references to his own day, with the poem’s first sim-
ile referring to the reign of Augustus (1.199 – 205), and the story of Apollo and
Daphne likewise anticipating the reign of Augustus, as Apollo prophesies the use
of his sacred laurel to grace Roman triumphs and adorn Augustus’s house (1.560 –
63). His only other proleptic references to the city before the foundation in book
14 occur in book 2, and they are both references to the city only just escaping total
catastrophe, catastrophes that would have ensured the city was never part of world
history. One is in a cosmic setting, when the natural site of the city is almost
expunged, as the Tiber is dried up along with other rivers by Phaethon’s chariot
(2.254 – 59); the other is an allusion to the geese that “were to save the Capitol with
their wakeful cry” (seruaturis uigili Capitolia uoce/... anseribus,2.538 – 39).^207
Again, in the Fasti,when the gods meet in council to deliberate how to save Rome
from the Gauls, Ovid takes as his template the Ennian council that deliberated over
the foundation of the city: in both cases, Mars expostulates with his father, Jupiter,
and is assured that all will be well.^208
It is highly significant that these two events, the city’s foundation and near
destruction by the Gauls, are the only “historical” events commemorated on the
Republican calendar, the Fasti Antiates.^209 Calendrical fastifrom the Principate
mention all kinds of events, but the Fasti Antiates, the only calendar we have sur-
viving from the Republic, mark only two historical events: 21 April, the Parilia and
the foundation of the city, and 18 July, the dies Alliensis,the day of the battle of the
Allia, when the Roman army was scattered by the advancing Gauls on their way
to the city, which they entered on the next day.^210
The foundation of the city and its near extinction by the Gauls are symbolically
joined events, linked by significant numbers, either 700 or 365, linked by themes of
Refounding the City: Ennius, Livy, Virgil. 103