Such was the conclusion of the legend. But, unfortunately for Roman pride, here also, as in the tale of Porsenna, traces of true history are preserved which show how little the Roman annalists regarded truth. Polybius tells us, as if he knew no other story, that the departure of the Gauls was caused by the intelligence that the Venetians, an Illyrian tribe, had invaded their settlements in northern Italy, and that they actually received the gold and marched off unmolested to their homes. It is added by a later historian, that Drusus, the elder brother of the emperor Tiberius, recovered this very gold from the Gauls of his own day. The Gauls left the city in ruins, in whatever way they were compelled to retire, whether by the sword of Camillus, or by the softer persuasion of gold. Two later inroads of the Gauls are distinguished by two famous legends: the last, or nearly the last, which occur in the pages of Roman history. In the Manlian house there was a family which bore the name of Torquatus. This name was said to have been won by T. Manlius, who fought with a gigantic Gallic champion on the bridge over the Anio in 361 B.C., and slew him. From the neck of the slain enemy he took the massy chain (_torques_) which the Gallic chiefs were in the habit of wearing. He put it round his own neck, and returning in triumph to his friends, was ever after known by the name of T. Manlius Torquatus. Of him we shall hear more. Again, when L. Camillus, a nephew of the great Camillus, was pursuing the Gauls through the Volscian plains in 349 B.C., a champion challenged any one of the Roman youth to single combat. The challenge was readily accepted by M. Valerius, who, by the side of the huge Gaul, looked like a mere stripling. At the beginning of the combat (wonderful to tell) a crow lighted upon his helmet; and as they fought, the bird confounded the Gaul by flying in his face and striking him with his beak, and flapping its wings before his eyes; so that he fell an easy conquest to the young Roman. Hence M. Valerius was ever after known by the name of Corvus, and his descendants after him. Him also we shall hear of hereafter; for he lived to be a great general, and more than once delivered his country from great danger.[b] Thus runs the legend of the first great event in Roman history--an event so important that the echo reached even to Greece. “The capture of Rome by the Gauls,” says George Cornewall Lewis,[f] “is the first event in Roman history which, so far as we know, attracted the notice of the contemporary Greeks. Plutarch says that Heraclides of Pontus spoke of a report from the far West, which described an Hellenic city called Rome, situated somewhere near the great sea, as having been taken by an army from the distant land of the Hyperboræans.”