Note 121 — MIGRATION OF THE GAULS. CONQUEST OF ROME.

A difficult passage in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, refers perhaps to this war. It is stated in it that a heron had risen from the ruins of the city, after its destruction by the barbarians. The latest commentators have, without any just authority, tried to connect this destruction with the war of Hannibal. It might apply to a Samnite campaign, in which Ardea was burnt down; as Strabo, perhaps, would induce us to believe, when asserting, that the Samnites had carried on their conquests as far as Ardea. Yet the Samnites would scarcely have been called barbarians. Most likely there is here an inversion of the tradition which we have just mentioned, that the Ardeates under Camillus had defeated the Gauls.