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MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER
The flowers of history, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain. Vol. I. B.C. 4004 to A.D. 1066.
page 69
And so Camillus entered Rome, and was called a second Romulus, as being the deliverer of his country.
At tins time die illustrious queen Esther flourished, and also Plato the philosopher. Queen Esther, daughter of the brother of Mordecai, of the tribe of Benjamin, was a captive, and was taken from Jerusalem to Susa, and on account of her beauty and her very celebrated virtue, while only à girl, ehe was united in marriage to the king of Persia. She exposed herself to death, in order to deliver her people, and she persuaded the king to crucify a friend of his, who was advising wicked measures against the people of God, on a cross, which he had prepared for Mordecai. And so she saved a free nation from destruction, and delivered them from slavery. She is buried in Susa, a city of the Medes, in which she was queen. In the three hundred and sixty-fifth year after the foundation of Rome, military tribunes were created instead of the two consuls, and under them the Roman affairs began to prosper. The following year, an immense gulf, reaching down to hell, suddenly opened in the middle of the city, and as it remained a long time, and alarmed every one, and as the soothsayers declared that it demanded the burial of a living man within it, Marcus Curtius mounted his horse, and in complete armour plunged into the gulf; and thus it was closed. In the mean time, Titus Quintius the dictator was sent against the Gauls, who had invaded Italy ; but the Gauls were encamped four miles from the city, on the other side of the river Anio, where a young man named Lucius ManHus, one of the most nobly born of the whole senate, went forward and slew a Gaul, who challenged him to single combat, and having stripped him of his golden chain (torquis), and placed it on his own neck, received in triumphant manner the name óf Torquatus, for himself and his posterity. Then the Gaulai were put to flight, and were also defeated soon after by Gains Sulpicius.
Another time, a certain Gaul challenged the bravest of the Romans. Then Marcus Valerius, a military tribune, offered himself, and having gone forth in armour, a crow (corvus) settled on his right arm. Presently, when he was fighting with the Gaul, the same crow with his wings and talons battered the eyes of the Gaul, so as to prevent him from looking straight forward. And so he was slain by .the tribune
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