• Brennus was the king of the Gauls, who, entering Rome unopposed, found the city deserted, and the Senators seated in their ivory chairs in the Forum, so silent and motionless that his soldiers took them for the statues of gods. He burned the city and laid siege to the Capitol, whither the people had fled for safety, and which was preserved from surprise by the cackling of the sacred geese in the Temple of Juno. Finally Brennus and his army were routed by Camillus, and tradition says that not one escaped. Pyrrhus was a king of Epirus, who boasted his descent from Achilles, and whom Hannibal called “the greatest of commanders.” He was nevertheless driven out of Italy by Curius, his army of eighty thousand being routed by thirty thousand Romans; whereupon he said that, “if he had soldiers like the Romans, or if the Romans had him for a general, he would leave no corner of the earth unseen, and no nation unconquered.” ↩
• Titus Manlius, surnamed Torquatus, from the collar ( torques ) which he took from a fallen foe; and Quinctius, surnamed Cincinnatus, or “the curly-haired.” ↩