is the keystone of his entire chronological edifice. The sack’s epochal nature in the early
Roman historical tradition is evident from the fact that Fabius Pictor dates the election
of the first plebeian consul as taking place twenty-two years after the Gauls captured
Rome (Gell. NA5.4.3 = Chassignet 1996, F 23). As Chris Kraus points out to me, Livy
even manages to place a quasi-fabulous story just before the demarcation of the refound-
ing so that he can pass the same sort of noncommittal judgment that he had given on the
status of fabulous stories before the “first” founding: compare Pref.6 and 5.21.8 – 9.
Livy puns on the close association between destruction and refounding in
5.49.7. As Camillus celebrates his triumph he is hailed as another founder (conditor)of
the city, while his soldiers are shouting out iocos... inconditos.These are “unpolished
or rough jokes,” but inconditusmeans literally “unfounded.” Coming as it does only six
words before conditor,the adjective activates the sense that the fate of the city is on a
knife-edge, able to tip toward “unfounded” or “founder”: Camillus’s great speech per-
suading the Romans not to leave for Veii is still to come.
On the proleptic resonances of the geese here, see Gildenhard and Zissos
2004, 52 – 53.
208.Fast.6.351 – 94, alluding to Enn. Ann.51 – 55 Skutsch, a passage he also alludes
to in Fast.2.481 – 90 and Met.14.805 – 17, where he describes the apotheosis of Romu-
lus. For the foundation of the city as the likely occasion for the Ennian council, see
Feeney 1984, 190. A related case is Propertius 4.4, where the day of Tarpeia’s
attempted betrayal of the city is given as the Parilia, the day of the city’s foundation
(4.4.73): once again, foundation and barely averted catastrophe are linked. On ancient
attempts to construct possible links between the stories of Tarpeia and the Gallic sack,
see Horsfall in Bremmer and Horsfall 1987, 68 – 70.
Michels 1967, 25; Rüpke 1995b, 359, 415 (with 560 – 70 on the dies Alliensis).
Since the Fasti Antiates are a Republican calendar, I should really give the date
of the Allia as 18 Quintilis, or as fifteen days before the Kalends of Sextilis.
Here again one sees how much recent discussion of these topics owes to the
insights of Quint (1993, chap. 2) and Kraus (1994b).
212.De Reditu Suo121 – 28; my thanks to Peter Brown for this reference.
B. Anderson 1991, esp. 192 – 99.
On the link between the Republic and the temple of Jupiter, see above, p. 89.
My thanks to W. S. Anderson for pointing out to me the importance of this watershed.
Livy’s use of the verb numerohere is very striking (reinforced, as Chris Kraus
points out to me, by the other “number words” in the sentence, magisand deminutum).
Numeroreally means “to count,” but here it must mean “to consider/estimate.” The
Loeb translation’s “reckon,” which I have borrowed, very well catches the syllepsis:
“considering/estimating” the origin of liberty is the same as “counting” the consuls.
We return to the conflation of liberty with counting consuls in chapter 6.
Kraus 1994a, 25.
notes to pages 103 – 105