Roman historians would later make Marcus Furius Camillus the hero both of the final war against Veii and of the recovery after the sack of Rome. As dictator, he commanded the Roman army that captured Veii. After the Gauls had entered Rome, Camillus was supposedly once again made dictator, defeated the Gallic army, and recovered the treasure that the Gauls had taken from the city. As dictator yet again, he was reported to have had a central role in opening the highest offices to plebeians in 367, a crucial event in the Struggle of the Orders. In all, Rome's historians thought that he had been military tribune with consular powers six times and dictator five times. Camillus is perhaps as much a figure of myth as of history: Details of his life seem to have been continually embellished from the fourth century to the first century B.C. By the latter date, he had become, in history and in legend, virtually a second founder of the city. As a result, to tease out his actual accomplishments from the myth may well be impos?sible. Without doubt, however, he must have been one of the leading figures in Rome during the opening decades of the fourth century.



The political order that would govern Rome in later, better-documented centuries emerged in a series of reforms and reorganizations that began during the mid-fourth century and continued into the early third century. Roman govern?ment required the direct participation of citizens, although all did not have equal responsibilities. Officials, priests, senators, and citizens performed their roles in and around the temples, public squares, and processional routes of the city. Most official actions took place in the open, under the gaze of others, and, because Rome lacked a bureaucracy, officials dealt directly with those that they were in the process of governing. Roman assumptions about government were markedly hierarchical, and, in all periods, a few leading families dominated public life. In the fourth century, magistracies and priesthoods formed the focus of conflicts and com?petition among members of Rome's wealthiest and most powerful families. Indi?viduals competed to win offices, secular as well as sacred. Conflicts over offices, priesthoods, and the powers of citizen assemblies formed part of the larger Struggle of the Orders. Plebeians sought eligibility for the highest offices, and many patricians resisted these demands.A small number of officeholders occupied the center of public life. At the top, beginning in 366, military tribunes with consular powers were no longer elected, and instead two consuls were chosen each year. During their year in office, the consuls served primarily as generals in Rome's wars. For this reason, they entered office in March, just in time to raise an army for the campaigning season. When they were present in the city, they made sacrifices and performed other rites of the public cults, presided over meetings of the senate, addressed assemblies of citizens, listened to complaints, and rendered judgments.

Consuls could be identified at a glance. They wore a special toga bordered in purple, the toga praetexta, and they sat on a distinctive chair inlaid with ivory, the sella curulis or ?curule? chair. Generally, they were surrounded by attendants of various kinds: messengers, heralds to make public announcements, scribes to record their decisions, and, for each consul, twelve lictors, who maintained order in his presence and carried the fasces, double headed axes bound in rods. The fasces were old marks of royal power in Rome and in Etruscan cities; they symbolized quite starkly the consuls? power to punish those who disobeyed them. In public, consuls took their places on platforms that elevated them over those who were to witness their actions, and their movements from place to place within the city often took on many of the attributes of processions.