[5] But, in general, the quality of the sources – which interject "plenty of myth, embellishment, and fantasy" – led Mary Beard, in the book SPQR, to write "Camillus is probably not much less fictional than the first Romulus".

[13] Archaeological remains near Veii include blocked drainage tunnels from the fifth-century, which may indicate the possibility that this story in Livy arises a Romans breakthrough into the city through them.

[18] In 394 BC, he supposedly secured the surrender of the Falisci in their main town of Falerii Veteres (modern Civita Castellana) after refusing to accept pupils from a schoolmaster as hostages.

Historians believe this story of disgrace before the courts is modelled on fates of Achilles and Scipio Africanus and is meant to draw comparison with Themistocles and Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus.

This account is corroborated by Greek sources as early as the 4th century BC; Polybius places the sack in the same year as the Peace of Antalcidas and the siege of Rhegium.

Then, at the climax of the Gallic sack, when a thousand pounds of gold is being weighed out, Camillus and a hastily organised army returns and defeats the Gauls, saving the city and recovering the ransom.

[30] Other traditions have different narratives: for example, the Livii Drusi are supposed to have by single combat with a Gaul named Drausus recovered the same ransom;[31] Plutarch records a fragment of Aristotle asserting that "a certain Lucius" (probably a Lucius Albinius who is recorded to have secreted away the Vestal Virgins and sacred objects to Caere) having saved the city.

[32] Polybius reports that rather than being defeated by Camillus, the Gauls occupied the city for some seven months before the Romans bought them off and they departed of their own accord to deal with an invasion of their territory by the Veneti.

This story also cannot be accepted and is more likely "a reflection of the tensions that arose concerning the distribution of the conquered territory of Veii" and to introduce "anti-plebeian elements" into the Camillan narrative.

[35] The speech does not appear in Polybius and may have been invented c. 122 BC in order to oppose by historical precedent Gaius Gracchus' proposal to establish a colony at Carthage with further embellishment of its anti-Italian themes during the time of the Social War.

[42] The account of Dio, coming from a Byzantine summary by Zonaras, asserts Camillus was elected dictator in 384 BC to put down the sedition of Marcus Manlius Capitolinus, who is believed to be trying to make himself king.

[43] According to Livy, there are ten years in which Gaius Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius Lateranus were elected plebeian tribunes continuously.

[46] More damningly, a passage of Aulus Gellius' Attic Nights (5.4) preserves a fragment of Numerius Fabius Pictor that shows that alleged years where tribunes blocked all elections were a late annalistic invention, likely to line up Greek and Roman chronologies.

Gary Forsythe, in Critical history of early Rome, accepts that the first law is consistent with voiced concerns over indebtedness from this period, that the second (limits on public land possession) is attested to in later speeches, and that the third is reflected in the consular fasti.

Modern scholars are especially suspicious of this report, especially because Livy notes confusion in his own sources over this victory, which is alternatively attributed to Titus Manlius Torquatus.

[50] By the late republic, after centuries of embellishment from the fourth to the first century BC, the Romans believed that Camillus had captured Veii, saved the city from the Gallic sack, saved the city from foreign threats on all sides, opened the highest magistracies to the plebeians, ensured domestic harmony, and largely settled the struggle of the orders.

[54] Camillus is similarly alleged to have resigned a dictatorship to which he was appointed merely because of faulty procedure; Livy mentions it – an event that "almost certainly never took place" – as an example of Roman legal scruples.

[55] In all, Camillus is mentioned in Livy's Ab urbe condita as an example to be followed eight times, an "unusually high frequency", usually in relation to his alleged successes as a general, moderation in the face of hot-headed colleagues, and triumphant recall from exile.