After the description of the first sack of Rome of the 387 b.C. mainly following the Titus Livy's words, provoked by the Gauls, lead by Brennus (who incidentally comes from a word which means King...), let's see what is the legend and what is the truth.

In particular, we have a problem of dating and timing! Titus Livy narrates that Furius Camillus, once he have defeated the Gauls, he would have honored the geese of the Capitoline hill, which had saved Rome, with a new temple erected in honour of Juno Moneta. Now, we know for certain that the temple was only built in the 345 b.C., 42 years after the looting. So already here there is the first inconsistency. Besides Livy himself tells us that Furio Camillo was the head of the roman army against Veii, the war that definitively ended with the conquest of the etruscan city (thanks to an underground tunnel dug by the Romans, which led directly within the city walls). The breakthrough came in the early years of the fourth century b.C., let's say 10 years before Brennus and the Gauls. How is it possible that Furio Camillo, to almost 80 years at the end, was even able to erect a new temple to Juno, being still the head of the army at such a late age?

Moreover several archeological evidences are underlining now how Rome was not completely damaged or fired how some ancient literary sources used to describe. So maybe it was not a real sack... First of all, Rome had no real walls (the first walls, true, were those of the Servian made right after this episode), but simply a system of ditches to protect the city, and the natural slope of the hills. Only the Capitoline Hill seemed to have some form of defense. Therefore it can be assumed that, regardless of the heroic deeds described by Titus Livy, perhaps the Romans paid without too much murmur a tribute, although heavy, Brennus and his Gauls to leave the city.

There is also a mystery about the fate of this elusive treasure: according to one version said that the Gauls, who fled to the north (Tuscany), after the defeat by the army lead by Furio Camillo, would have been attacked by Caere (Cerveteri, a city friend of Rome, at least initially), and that the treasure had been recovered. According to another source, however, the treasure was recovered by a man who defeated a head gallico called Drausus, on in Emilia-Romagna. This man, a roman, won the right to be called Drusus founding the family which will see in the following, among its exponents men like Tiberius, or Nero. What is the truth? The only thing we know is that the Romans learned something from this tragic event, improving the army and building real walls. In addition, they had, centuries later, a real aversion to the Gauls, who on several occasions were even brutally, treated with cruelty by the Romans, more than in other occasions with other people. Maybe it was born a kind of fear, atavistic, but also the awareness that Rome, to be the best, had to do more and more...