Gold of Tolosa

In a fragment from Cassius Dio's work, the historian asserted that the Gold of Tolosa had its origins in the Gallic invasion of Greece under Brennus. In 280 BC, a great army of Gallic warriors invaded Macedon and central Greece. According to Pausanias, the Gauls were motivated by a desire for plunder. The success of the expedition was rich enough to prompt Brennus, who had been one of the leaders of the 280 BC expedition, to persuade the Gallic tribes to launch another invasion. Brennus convinced the Gauls that the relative Greek weakness at the time and the great wealth of the Greek cities and temple sanctuaries were opportunities to be exploited. The campaign of 279 BC proved less successful than that of the previous year. While a Greek coalition force of Aetolians, Boeotians, Athenians, Phocians, and other Greeks north of Corinth mustered at the narrow pass of Thermopylae, on the east coast of central Greece, Brennus pushed southward with his warriors. A Greek attempt to delay the Gauls at the Spercheios failed when a Gallic force of ten thousand swam the river and moved to outflank the outnumbered Greeks. The rest were thought to have returned to their homelands in southern Gaul, bearing with them the treasures of Greece. == Disappearance of the gold ==

and the Teutones. During the latter part of the second century BC, a large coalition of German and Gallic tribes, which eventually included the Cimbri, the Teutones, the Boii, the Tigurini, and the Ambrones, undertook a mass migration. After this coalition inflicted several defeats on Rome, a Roman army under the command of the consul Lucius Cassius Longinus in 107 BC confronted the Tigurini near Burdigala, modern-day Bordeaux. The Romans were defeated badly and a number of Gallic tribes, including the Volcae Tectosages, revolted. A second force, under the command of the consul Quintus Servilius Caepio, was dispatched to Gallia Transalpina to restore order in 106 BC. After subduing Tolosa, Caepio reported the discovery of a massive hoard of treasure. Strabo, citing Poseidonius, said the treasure amounted to some fifteen thousand talents of gold and silver bullion, Despite orders to send the treasure to Rome, the gold never reached the city. Orosius recorded that Caepio had sent the treasure under guard to Massilia, a local Roman ally. However, the soldiers guarding the gold were slain, with the treasure itself never found again. Caepio was suspected of having stolen the gold in its entirety. The end result was a rout, with at least 70,000 Roman legionaries dead, and total losses numbering over 120,000. While Caepio survived the debacle, his career did not. He was quickly stripped of his proconsular imperium and his seat in the Roman Senate. He was soon brought up on charges by the tribune of the plebs Gaius Norbanus. Charged over the loss of his army, Caepio was stripped of his Roman citizenship, fined 15,000 talents, had his property confiscated, and forbidden fire and water within eight hundred miles of Rome. He died in exile in Smyrna. == ==

, supposedly the last heir of the Gold of Tolosa The gold of Tolosa was never found, but was suspected to have remained in the custody of the Servilli Caepiones, who despite the total impoverishment of their patriarch, became immensely wealthy. Caepio's grandson died young from an unnamed illness, while the last heir, Caepio's great-grandson Marcus Junius Brutus, would undertake the assassination of Julius Caesar, an action which eventually led to the rise of Octavian and the Roman Empire, and Brutus' death at the Battle of Philippi. Perhaps as a consequence of these generational misfortunes, the sources make frequent allusions to the gold being cursed. The earliest, Strabo, says that due to "having laid hands on [the gold of Tolosa]... Caepio ended his life in misfortunes", == Disagreements in the ancient sources ==

As is common, the ancient sources frequently contradict each other. Cicero is the earliest author whose extant writings mention the Gold of Tolosa, referencing the inquiry into its disappearance in De Natura Deorum, which was written in the two years before his death in 43 BC. Cicero does not mention its provenance, asserts the hoard's origin as that of treasure looted from Delphi. also mentions the account of the treasure's origin as the plunder of Delphi, but prefers Poseidonius's account, now lost. Quoting Poseidonius, Strabo asserts that "the temple at Delphi was in those times already empty of such treasure, because it had been robbed at the time of the sacred war by the Phocians." Poseidonius did not believe that the Tectosages successfully brought away the plunder of Delphi to Tolosa, as they had "suffered wretchedly" during the retreat and gone in different directions. Instead, Poseidonius wrote that the origin of the hoard was in Gaul itself, "since the country was rich in gold, and also belonged to people who were god-fearing and not extravagant in their ways of living, it came to have treasures..." The only extant sources to mention the Gallic attack on Delphi are the second-century AD travelogue of Pausanias and the history of Justinus, the latter of which excerpts the first century BC works of Pompeius Trogus. Pausanias states that the Gauls did not sack the temple sanctuary and that none of the Gauls survived the retreat, while Justinus's summary states that the attack was a disaster and resulted in the fragmentation of the Gallic force, with some settling in Anatolia, others in Thrace, and a third contingent that returned to Tolosa. While Strabo argued that the Temple of Apollo at Delphi lacked the treasure to be plundered as the Phocians had already taken it in during the Third Sacred War (356–346 BC), Philip of Macedon's settlement of that conflict had included the stipulation that the Phocians repay what they had plundered from the temple of Delphi at the rate of 60 talents a year. Excluding Phocian reparations, Pausanias' account describes a number of expensive artistic votive offerings made to the sanctuary from all over the ancient Greek world in the years preceding the invasion. == Sources ==