Allia river according
to Titus Livy ran at the eleventh mile of Salaria road (maps 1 and 1a),
flowing down Crustumini montes, the mounts of Crustumerium, currently named Marcigliana
hills, whose height ranges from 80 to 120 m above sea level: it
seems the Romans gave the word "mount" a wider meaning
than us. Allia river is therefore identified with the present
"fosso Maestro" (it means Main Drain: even the word
"river" was maybe used more emphatically than we do),
in Marcigliana area, belonging to 4th District of Rome municipality, at about
3 kilometers from the limits of Monterotondo borough.
Salaria road crosses Allia "river" at kilometer 18.300:
coming from Rome is right past the garden centre (vivai Marcelli),
on a bend to right, photo
1 and map 2, few meters after receiving
the tributary Fosso della Regina (Queen's Drain, photo 2 and map 3),
then it runs (straightened as a canal) in parallel to the Tiber,
in which flows near the Settebagni turn-off of the motorway connecting
road Fiano-GRA (it is the last drain passed over by the motorway
before Settebagni turn-off, coming from Florence, photo 3, at the kilometer 19).
The photo
4 shows
river Allia as seen from the fast railway Rome-Florence.
The municipality of Monterotondo named a street after Allia river:
it lies at Monterotondo Scalo, and it is a side street of Salaria
road, few meters back kilometre 22,500, then about four kilometres
after the same river.
The battle
On July 18th of 390 b.C. (Dies quartus
decimus ante Kalendas Augustas) Allia river was the field
of one of the most notorious battles of Roman age.
The Senones Gauls, led by Brennus, came down from their recent
settlements in Marche and Romagna, attacked the city of Clusium,
then headed for Rome. According to Strabo the Senones attacked
Rome together with the Gaesates, which probably weren't a real
people, but just mercenaries of the Gauls. At 11 miles from the
city, near the location of the ancient city of Crustumerium, which probably was already abandoned,
the Gauls engaged in battle the Romans, who drew up an unskilled
army, driven by the dreadful news from the lands raided by Gallic
hordes.
The Romans were frightened by the Gauls, for their wild fighting
behaviour, their weapons clanging on the shields, their ferocious
songs and war-cries and for their appearance, with long hairs,
bare trunk and painted face, traits never seen in the enemies
the Romans faced in the previous wars in Italy and Mediterranean.
The number of Gauls was overwhelming and the Romans, to avoid
an encirclement, placed the troops on a wide but not thick front;
Brennus first attacked the right wing of the Roman army, which
was made of reserve troops placed on Marcigliana hills.
Brennus suspected the small number of Roman soldiers on the wing
could hide a larger number of concealed soldiers, to surround
the Gauls as they were attacking the centre of Roman array; on
the contrary the Roman right wing dispersed at once and this caused
the scattering of the whole army, with a great number of Roman
soldiers trying to flee towards Veii, swimming across the Tiber:
many of them couldn't swim and drowned, even by the cuirass weight.
The Roman soldiers actually dead in action were very few, and
Titus Livy asserts there were no losses in combat at all, and
many of the dead were pierced through in the back by their own
comrades crowding to escape. Those who succeeded in escaping to
Veii, says Titus Livy, didn't worry about giving the alarm to
Rome, while the survivors of the right wing, the first to be attacked,
ran to Rome and sheltered in Capitol citadel without taking care
to shut the city gates.
The news of the battle reached even Greece: Aristotle knew it
and Heraclides turned it into a fanciful defeat against the Hyperborean
(a mythological people of the Far North), while for the Romans
the day of the battle was for centuries a mournful day (see next
chapter: dies Alliensis), recalled also by Virgil in Aeneid
(VII,
717): infaustum
... Allia nomen.
According to Titus Livy the Gauls were astonished by the ease
of the victory and became suspicious when their scouts noticed
the city gates were open, so they waited between Rome and the
banks of Aniene river before attacking, even if Plutarch maintained
the delay in pursuing the offensive was due to the celebrations
for the victory and to the division of the booty.
But, at last, three days after the battle, the Gauls burst into
Rome through Collina gate, besieged Capitol citadel, in which
the few defenders barricaded themselves (here occurred the Capitol
geese episode) until the city surrended by starvation and was
sacked and set on fire.
Indeed many of the inhabitants already sheltered after the battle,
running away to Janiculum hill, Caere, Veii and other cities in
the neighbourhood.
At the beginning the Gauls were awe-stricken, as evidenced by
the episode of the Roman patricians: they sat in the Forum in
a solemn attitude and the Gauls mistook them for statues, by their
loftiness of mien and their dress, until one of the barbarians
tried to pull the beard to one of them, Marcus Papirius, who reacted
hitting him with his ivory sceptre, stirring up Gaul's wrath which
started the slaughter.
The Gauls occupied Rome for about one year even if Polybius (Histories,
II, 22) talk of a 7-months period, then, according to the legend,
Furius Camillus conquered the city again, even if probably were
the Gauls to resolve to leave, after getting a rich ransom (remember
the well-known Brennus sentence "Vae Victis!"
meaning "Woe to the conquered") signing a peace
treaty which lasted for one century.
Only six years after the battle, in 384 b.C., the army of Praeneste,
during a war against Rome, choose Allia river as a battle-field,
expecting the Romans to have for the place the same awe they had
for the date, but they were defeated by Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus,
who pursued them until capturing the same city of Praeneste (Livy,
VI, 28-29).
References:
Titus
Livy, History of Rome, V, 36-40
Plutarch, Parallel lifes, I, life of Camillus, XIX-XX
Polybius, II, 17-22;
Strabo, Geography. Italy, V, 1,6;
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/mlcr/mlcr01.htm
http://www.cronologia.it/storia/aa390.htm
http://www.archeorm.arti.beniculturali.it/crustumerium/SUBMENUCRONO/cronotardarep.htm
http://www.archeorm.arti.beniculturali.it/crustumerium/SUBMENUCRONO/cronomediarep.htm
http://www.storiaspqr.it/
http://www.celt.net/Celtic/celtopedia/c.html
(chapter: "Celts in battle")
http://www.livius.org/a/battlefields/allia/allia.html
http://omega.cohums.ohio-state.edu:8080/hyper-lists/bmcr-l/2000/0081.html
July 18th, the date of the battle had a so great impact on Rome, that lasted in Roman calendary as dies Alliensis, (Varro, De Lingua Latina VI, 32; Florus, Epitomae de Tito Livio, 7,7.), indicated as ill-omened day (nefastus, from ne fas, meaning illicit), in which was not allowed to perform administrative acts, to go to Court and to do business, as a memory of the most shameful defeat of republican history (Livy, VI, II). Plutarch says the dies Alliensis was so inauspicious that because of it other two days a month were so deemed. Even Ovid in its Ars amatoria (I, 412-413) remembers the sad day: Tu licet incipias, qua flebilis Allia luce / Vulneribus Latiis sanguinolenta fui. Almost 500 years later Vitellius was blamed for undertaking Pontifex Maximus office on dies Alliensis, hence accusing him of being ignorant both of human and godly matters (Svetonius, Vit 11). Still talking about ignorance: according to a Romagna region website close to the Northern League (I don't put a link to it, for the sake of my ancestors from Romagna), Allia day should be a national holiday of padania, being the anniversary of a victory of the Celts over Rome (they write it with lower-case initial: ignorants!), but indeed, since that victory was about the only one in 1000 years, maybe they're right to celebrate. According to Plutarch in the same day, 87 years before (477 b.C.), it occurred the defeat of Cremera river (few kilometers in a bee-line from Allia) where the Etruscans killed in battle 300 members of gens Fabia, on dies Alliensis of 64 A.D. begun the Great Fire of Rome (the one imputed to Nero), which lasted 6 days. The day after dies Alliensis, 1943 July 19th Rome was bombed by the allies, and on 2001 July 20th, just on Crustumini Montes, I fell off my bicycle, getting myself abrasions to elbows and knees: beware the dies Alliensis!
References:
http://italia.novaroma.org/viaromana/calendario.htm
http://www.clubs.psu.edu/aegsa/rome/jul16.htm
http://kenji.chungnam.ac.kr/my/references/phrase/data/33.html#alliensis
http://www.daltai.com/proverbs/weeks/week77.htm
http://www.celt.net/Celtic/celtopedia/c.html
(chapter:
"Celts in battle")
Lucaria were feasts
consecrated to the woods, celebrated between 19th and 21th
of July (a.d.
XIV-XII Kalendas Augustas),
the days after Dies Alliensis, in a wood (lucus)
between Salaria road and Tiber river, to thank the woods for the
shelter given to the survivors of Allia river battle (Festus,
De Verborum Significatione).
Titus Livy relates of two prodigies occurred in 177
b.C. during the preparations for a military expedition in Spain:
a meteorite fell on a lucus sacred to Mars, and a bird
sacred to the god Sancus split a stone with its bill. It is possible
the lucus above mentioned was the one in which the Romans
celebrated Lucaria.
According to another interpretation the feast was dedicated generically
to every wood and sylvan divinity, while Ovid (Fasti 2,
67) maintained
the feasts were consecrated to an asylum founded by Romulus near
the Tiber (tum quoque vicini lucus celebratur Alerni, /qua
petit aequoreas advena Thybris aquas).
Plutarch
(Roman Questions,
88), tells the money spent for public feasts was called "lucar"
because around the city there were sacred bushes (luci)
consecrated to the gods, whose proceeds were set aside for public
show.
Maybe Lucaria could be identified with propitiatory rituals addressed
to genii, sylvan spirits protecting the woods. According
to Cato (De Agricultura,
139 - 140)
these rituals were performed in the woods before felling them
to cultivate, or anyway before ploughing untilled field, and consisted
in sacrificing a pig and saying propitiatory wording, to be repeated
along the lenght of the work, and to be performed once more if
the work was interrupted or in case of interference with other
religious feasts. According to other sources Lucaria were consecrated
to Leucaria, mother of Rome, the legendary woman who gave her
name to the city and to Rhea Silvia, mother of Romulus and Remus.
It looks that already in late republican age Lucaria weren't much
followed.
References:
SCHEID
John (2009) Rito e religione dei Romani. Sestante, Bergamo.
STARA TEDDE Giorgio (1905) I boschi sacri dell'antica Roma.
Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma,
XXIII, 189-232.
http://www.capitolium.org/ita/ludi/feste.htm
http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Roman_Questions*/D.html
http://progetti.webscuola.tin.it/multilab/udin02/fr/lucaria.htm
http://www.novaroma.org/forum/mainlist/2002/2002-07-19.html
http://www.maat.it/livello2/luglio-01.htm
http://www.novaroma.org/religio_romana/cato_dig.html
page created: September 2th 2004 and last updated: November 25th 2012