Livy wrote this History of Rome as a long account of the city’s early centuries. Book 6 of the series picks up in Italy after the Gallic sack: Camillus had driven the invaders off and refused to let the people abandon the burned hills for another town’s standing houses. The gods, he said, belonged here.

The city is rebuilt, but the fight between rich and poor is not. Marcus Manlius Capitolinus, the man who had held the Capitol against the Gauls, throws in with ruined debtors, is accused of aiming at a kingship, and is thrown from the Tarpeian Rock, the cliff used for executions. Old Camillus still steadies wars against the Volsci and Aequi, neighboring Italian peoples. Walls rise. Colonies are planted. The Licinian-Sextian laws open the consulship — the pair of officials elected to run Rome for a year — to plebeians, the common citizens. Debt, land, and office drive the long struggle. A burned city decides it will be a republic again, and that the poor will not rebuild it for free.