Marcus Manlius Capitolinus- Roman FigureMortal"Defender of the Capitol"

The Night Defense of the Capitol

In 390 BCE, a Gallic army under Brennus sacked Rome and besieged the remaining defenders on the Capitoline Hill. The siege dragged on for months, and the Gauls resolved to take the citadel by stealth. Under cover of night, they scaled the cliff face so silently that neither the Roman sentries nor even the guard dogs stirred. But the sacred geese of Juno's temple, kept on the hill even through the famine of the siege because of their consecrated status, raised a clamor at the sound of the climbing warriors. Marcus Manlius, a former consul who lodged near the summit, woke at the noise, seized his arms, and rushed to the precipice. He struck the first Gaul with his shield boss, sending the man tumbling back into those behind him and starting a cascade of falling bodies. Other defenders rallied to his position, and the night attack was repelled. For this deed Manlius received gifts of grain and wine from each soldier on the hill and earned the cognomen Capitolinus.

The Fall from the Rock

The years after the Gallic sack brought economic crisis to Rome. Many plebeians had been ruined by the war and fallen into debt bondage. Manlius, now possessed of enormous popular prestige, began championing their cause, paying their debts from his own fortune and denouncing the patrician senate for hoarding wealth taken from the Gauls. The senate accused him of seeking kingship, the gravest charge in the Roman political vocabulary. Livy records that Manlius was tried before the people, and when his supporters could see the Capitol from the meeting place and remember his heroism, they refused to condemn him. The senate then moved the trial to the Peteline Grove outside the city, where the Capitol was hidden from view. There the people convicted him, and he was hurled from the Tarpeian Rock on the very hill he had once saved. The Manlii gens afterward forbade any member from bearing the praenomen Marcus, a decree of collective shame.