Camillus,

Camillus, MARCUS FURIUS, a celebrated Roman patrician who first makes his appearance as censor (consular tribune, says Livy) in 403 B.C. He finished the war against Veii, taking the town in 396, after a siege of ten years; and in 394 he besieged the Falerii, who, after bravely defending themselves, were led by his magnanimous restoration of their children to yield unconditionally. Condemned nominally on a charge of misappropriating the booty, but really because of his patrician haughtiness, he banished himself from Rome (391), and lived in retirement at Ardea, until Brennus (q.v.) had captured and destroyed the whole of Rome except the Capitol. Recalled and appointed dictator, he raised an army, and appearing, according to the legend, just at the moment when the garrison were about to purchase the departure of the Gauls, defeated and drove them from the town. It was due to his strenuous resistance that the proposal of the plebeians to remove to Veii was defeated, and the city rebuilt. He afterwards obtained new victories over the Æqui, the Volsci, and the Etrusci; and in 367 B.C., when war broke out with the Gauls, he, though eighty years old, accepted the dictatorship for the fifth time, defeated the barbarians near Alba, and made peace between patricians and plebeians. After all allowances for a considerable admixture of poetic fiction in the accounts that have come down to us, Camillus still stands out as one of the most prominent and worthy names in the history of Rome. He died of the plague, 365 B.C., lamented by the whole Roman people.