In the year 361 B.C., Titus Manlius, son of him who had saved the Capitol from the night attack of the Gauls, and twelve years later M.Valerius, a young military tribune, were, it will be remembered, the two Roman heroes who vanquished in single combat the two Gallic giants who insolently defied Rome.

The gratitude towards them was general and of long duration, for two centuries afterwards (in the year 167 B.C.) the head of the Gaul with his tongue out still appeared at Rome, above the shop of a money-changer, on a circular sign-board, called "the Kymrian shield" (scutum Cimbricum).
After seventeen years' stay in Latium, the Gauls at last withdrew, and returned to their adopted country in those lovely valleys of the Po which already bore the name of Cisalpine Gaul.

They began to get disgusted with a wandering life.

Their population multiplied; their towns spread; their fields were better cultivated; their manners became less barbarous.
For fifty years there was scarcely any trace of hostility or even contact between them and the Romans.

But at the beginning of the third century before our era, the coalition of the Samnites and Etruscans against Rome was near its climax; they eagerly pressed the Gauls to join, and the latter assented easily.