Only the senate and a thousand warriors had shut themselves up in the Capitol, a citadel which commanded the city.

The Gauls kept them besieged there for seven months.

The circumstances of this celebrated siege are well known, though they have been a little embellished by the Roman historians.

Not that they have spoken too highly of the Romans themselves, who, in the day of their country's disaster, showed admirable courage, perseverance, and hopefulness.

Pontius Cominius, who traversed the Gallic camp, swam the Tiber, and scaled by night the heights of the Capitol, to go and carry news to the senate; M.Manlius, who was the first, and for some moments the only one, to hold in check, from the citadel's walls, the Gauls on the point of effecting an entrance; and M.Furius Camillus, who had been banished from Rome the preceding year, and had taken refuge in the town of Ardea, and who instantly took the field for his country, rallied the Roman fugitives, and incessantly harassed the Gauls--are true heroes, who have earned their weed of glory.