Then the rebuilding of Rome began. The sites of the temples were retraced as far as could be done in the ruins. The laws of the twelve tables and some other records were recovered, but the mass of the historical annals of Rome had been destroyed. Some relics were said to have been miraculously preserved, among them the shepherd's crook of Romulus. But the bulk of the possessions of the Romans had vanished in the flames; the streets were mere heaps of ashes; the very walls had been in part pulled down; rubbish and ruin lay everywhere. Rome, like the phoenix, had to be born again from its ashes. Men built wherever they could find a clear spot. Stones and roofing-material were brought from Veii, and one city was dismantled that another might be restored. Stones and timber were supplied to any man from the public lands. The city rapidly rose again. But it was an irregular city; the streets ran anywhere; no effort was made at rule or system in the making of the new Rome. As for Camillus, he came to be honored as the second founder of Rome. While the Romans were at work on their new homes they were harassed by their foes, and he was kept busy with the army in the field. He lived for twenty-five years longer, and in the year 367 B.C., when some eighty years of age, he marched again to meet the Gauls in a new assault upon Rome, and defeated them with such slaughter that they left Rome alone for many years afterwards. Marcus Manlius, the preserver of the Capitol, was not so fortunate. He came forward as the patron of the poor, who began to suffer again from the severe laws against debtors. Finally he began to use his large fortune to relieve suffering debtors, and is said to have paid the debts of four hundred debtors, thus saving them from bondage. This generosity won him the unbounded affection of the people, who called him the "Father of the Commons." But it aroused the suspicion of the patricians, and some of these, against whom he had used violent language, had him arrested on a charge of treason, perhaps with good reason. Though he showed the many honors he had received for services to his country, he was condemned to death and his house razed to the ground. Thus the patricians dealt with the benefactors of the poor. _THE CURTIAN GULF._ During three years--363 to 361 B.C.--Rome was ravaged by the plague, which was so violent and fatal as to carry off the citizens by hundreds. In its first year it found a noble victim in Camillus, the conqueror of Veii and the second founder of Rome, who four years before had a second time defeated the Gauls. He was the last of the old heroes of Rome, those whose glory belongs to romance rather than history. The Gauls had destroyed the records of old Rome, and left only legend and romance. With the new Rome history fairly began.