The Roman line was thin in order to prevent any flanking. A Roman reserve was stationed on a hill to the right. Brennus, seeing this, assumed it was an attempt to hit him in the rear during the battle. He allocated some of his force to attack the hill. The attack on the hill opened the battle. The bloodcurdling charge of these wild men was something the Romans had never encountered before and it scared the crap out of them. The men on the hill put up a half-hearted fight and soon retreated. This retreat started the panic in the Roman line. Livy, who normally put a good face on Roman defeats, states that most of the Romans ran “without even returning the shout.” (Imagine having to explain not only coming home without your shield, but also without using your war cry.) The line was broken in several places, especially on the left. Half the army fled to the Tiber, many of them attempting and failing to swim across with all their armor on. The Roman retreat was as precipitous as any in their history. Few of the Roman dead had wounds to the front of their body. The Romans lost probably half of their army, the Gauls lost a scant few. Brennus marched on Rome and took it without a fight. The Romans had left the gates open and had taken refuge on the Capitoline Hill. Most of the senators remained defiantly in their homes. They had decided to offer themselves as a sacrifice for the eventual winning of the war. The Romans called this sort of ritual a “devotion.” When a Gaul approached one of the Senators who was seated in his front doorway and tugged on his long beard, the senator struck him with his staff. The gloves were off and the Gauls proceeded to kill any senator they encountered. Rome was sacked. Parts of the city were burned to get hiders to come out. (Archeological evidence does not support the legend that the city was razed.) It must have seemed like the end of the world to many Romans.
Brennus was determined to finish off the last Romans. His first assault on the citadel was beaten back by a counterattack. His second attack was at night, using vines to climb the hill. According to a legend, this attack was foiled when the sacred geese of Juno sounded the alarm. Marcus Manlius (a former consul) “being aroused from sleep by their cackling and the clapping of their wings, snatched up his arms, and at the same time calling the others to do the same, proceeds to the spot; and whilst the others are thrown into confusion, he struck with the boss of his shield and tumbles down a Gaul, who had already got footing on the summit; and when the fall of this man as he tumbled down those who were next him, he slew others, who in their consternation had thrown away their arms, and caught hold of the rocks to which they clung.” [Livy] Manlius then did his Horatius imitation as he held off the enemy until reinforcements arrived and doomed the attack. Brennus settled in for a siege. Meanwhile, Camillus was leading a guerrilla war in the countryside. The conqueror of Veii had been exiled after his triumphant capture of that city. He was prosecuted for either misappropriating the spoils from Veii or for riding in a chariot pulled by four white horses in his triumph. The color white would have been considered an impious attempt to associate himself with the god Apollo. He had been banished from the city, but unlike Coriolanus, he remained a patriotic Roman.
Camillus recruited an army of Latins and Roman survivors to make the Gauls howl. They attacked foraging parties and made life more difficult for the barbarians. Meanwhile, the Gauls in the city were being weakened by starvation and disease. The cheeky Romans on the hill would throw down bread to torment the barbarians and make them think the Romans were well-supplied. Brennus was pressured into negotiating. After seven months, the Gauls offered terms. The Romans had to pay a huge ransom to get the Gauls to leave. According to legend, when a Roman complained about the Gauls cheating in the weighing of the gold, Brennus threw his sword on the scale and said “vae victus” (“woe to the defeated”). Another legend has Camillus interrupting the paying of the gold and defeating the Gauls in a battle fought in the Forum. You have to give the Romans credit for their historical license. Back then, what was the point of writing history if you could not edit out humiliation? Regardless of whether the ransom was paid, Rome definitely fell to the Gauls in 390 and this had a major impact on the city and its army. Allia ended up being the Roman equivalent of Pearl Harbor because this defeat galvanized the Romans to never let it happen again. The city was rebuilt with a new wall that was seven miles long, 24 feet high, and 12 feet wide. It was this wall that withstood all attacks until that of Alaric and his Visigoths in 410 C.E.
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