Brennus

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Brennus is the name of two Celtic chieftains famous in ancient history:

1 The sack of Rome: the 'first Brennus'
2 The invasion of Greece: the 'second Brennus'
3 Etymology
4 References
- 4.1 The first Brennus
- 4.2 The second Brennus

The sack of Rome: the 'first Brennus'

In 387 BC, in the Battle of the Allia an army of Cisalpine Gauls attacked Rome, led by Brennus, a chieftain of the Senones of the Adriatic coast of Italy). They captured the entire city except for the Capitoline Hill, which was successfully held against them. However, seeing their city devastated, the Romans attempted to buy their salvation from Brennus. They agreed to pay one thousand pounds weight of gold, but Brennus had it weighed on scales he had tampered with. According to legend, during a dispute over the accuracy of the weights used to measure the ransom of gold Brennus demanded, he threw his sword upon the scales and uttered the famous quote "Vae victis", which translates to "woe be to the conquered".

Before he could kill the Romans for their audacity in accusing him of cheating, the exiled dictator Marcus Furius Camillus appeared with an army, and refused to allow him to take the gold. In an initial battle through Rome's streets, the Gauls were ejected from the city, and in a second battle away from the city, Camillus slaughtered the invaders, earning the title of the Second Founder of Rome, for saving the city.

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The invasion of Greece: the 'second Brennus'

In 279 BC, another army of Celts led by another Brennus invaded Macedonia and northern Greece. He turned the Greek defense at the pass of Thermopylae, and sacked Delphi, where he was wounded. He then penetrated into Epirus and sacked the treasures of the temples of Zeus at Dodona and Olympia. Facing determined Greek resistance, he withdrew to Macedonia, dying from his wound. Without him, his people split. Some of them crossed the Bosporus and settled in a part of Asia Minor that came to be called Galatia, while some settled in Thrace, founding a short-lived city-state named Tylis. The others returned to their homelands in Gaul, keeping in trust the treasures of Brennus' campaign.

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Etymology

The name Brennus is likely a title rather than a proper name. Probably meaning "courageous, zealous, intense", it is the Old Celtic word from which is derived the Brythonic Celtic word "Brenin", which means King. In AD 69, when the Canninefates at the mouth of the Rhine joined in the Batavian uprising, they were led by "a certain Brinno, a man of a certain stolid bravery and of distinguished birth. His father, after venturing on many acts of hostility, had scorned with impunity the ridiculous expedition of Caligula. His very name, the name of a family of rebels, made him popular. Raised aloft on a shield after the national fashion, and balanced on the shoulders of the bearers, he was chosen general" (Tacitus, Histories, IV [1]).

The name of Bran the Blessed, King of Britain in the Mabinogion, may be related, although 'Bran' seems to be derived from the Welsh word for raven rather than brenin.

Geoffrey of Monmouth also writes in his Historia Regum Britanniae about a personage named "Brennius" who conquers Rome. He probably created this character from the two Brenni of history.

In 1530 the Duke of Norfolk, arguing Tudor claims to imperial status, told the Imperial ambassador Eustache Chapuys that an "Englishman" called Brennus, the founder of Bristol, had conquered Rome (Thomas Healy, Times Literary Supplement 24 June 2005 p 25, reviewing Philip Schwyzer, Literature Nationalism and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales, Cambridge, 2005). This looks like a recollection of Geoffrey's "Brennius".

In modern day France, the team winning the French rugby league is offered a trophy called "Le Bouclier de Brennus" or Brennus's Shield.

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