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of the saving of the Capitol was a later invention to justify his cognomen, which may be better explained by his domicile. Some scholars consider him the second martyr in the cause of social reform at Rome.

Pliny the Elder describes Manlius among his "instances of extreme courage":

The military honours of Manlius Capitolinus would have been no less splendid than [those of Titus Caecilius Denter], if they had not been all effaced at the close of his life. Before his seventeenth year, he had gained two spoils, and was the first of equestrian rank who received a mural crown; he also gained six civic crowns, thirty seven donations, and had twenty-three scars on the fore-part of his body. He saved the life of P. Servilius, the master of the horse, receiving wounds on the same occasion in the shoulders and the thigh. Besides all this, unaided, he saved the Capitol, when it was attacked by the Gauls, and through that, the state itself; a thing that would have been the most glorious act of all, if he had not so saved it, in order that he might, as its king, become its master. But in all matters of this nature, although valour may effect much, fortune does still more.

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