Le oche del Campidoglio
Today I'm gonna tell you the most famous legend of Rome, the legend of Campidoglio's (Rome townhall) gooses. We are in the 390 b.C. and Rome was besieged from a barbaric army led by Brenno. They have already surrounded the Campidoglio and they were looking for a passage to enter the palace in which there were the last romans (the others went to Vejo and Caere when the enemies were close to the city). The only hope for Rome was the leader Marco Furio Camillo, but he was exiled in Ardea for his political positions and it was difficult to contact him; anyway a man was able to reach him, but when he came back to Rome, enemies saw him accessing the Campidoglio from a secret passage. So, they were going to enter the city when the gooses of the temple of Juno (a divinity, the wife of Zeus) started to make a lot of noises; it's important to remark that they were the last group of animals (the others were dead because of the siege) because they were consecrated to Juno and she was a protector of Rome. Because of these noises Marco Manlio, an ex consul, noticed the army and he called out his troups expelling them. Meanwhile Furio Camillo was reaching Rome with his army and the barbaric army was loosing a lot of battles; so Brenno, cleverly, said that his army was ready to leave Rome if the city would give them 1000 pounds of gold. Romans decided to pay, but when they were ready to give the gold, they noticed that the balance was set wrongly (enemies wanted to cheated them); so they protested, but Brenno, put his iron sword on the balance demanding a bigger weight of gold and said: "Vae Victis" (Losers must be careful). But while romans were looking for the other gold, Furio Camillo reached Rome with his army and keeping his sword in his hand in front of Brenno, said: "Non auro sed ferro, recuperanda est patria" (Not with the gold, but with the iron, we can redeem our country). So with his army he fighted off Brenno. Fro more informations post me. Dblk