Book 22
12.6
Nevertheless, he drenched the altars with the blood of an excessive number of victims, sometimes offering up a hundred oxen at once, with countless flocks of various other animals, and with white birdsA colour of good omen; cf. Juv. xiii. 141, gallinae filius albae; Suet., Galba, 1; Hor., Sat. i. 7, 8, equis albis; etc. hunted out by land and sea; to such a degree that almost every day his soldiers, who gorged themselves on the abundance of meat, living boorishly and corrupted by their eagerness for drink, were carried through the squares to their lodgings on the shoulders of passers-by from the public temples, where they indulged in banquetsI.e. sacrificial feasts. that deserved punishment rather than indulgence; especially the PetulantesCf. xx. 4, 2, note. and the Celts, whose wilfulness at that time had passed all bounds.
12.7
Moreover, the ceremonial rites were excessively increased, with an expenditure of money hitherto unusual and burdensome. And, as it was now allowed without hindrance, everyone who professed a knowledge of divination, alike the learned and the ignorant, without limit or prescribed rules, were permitted to question the oracles and the entrails, which sometimes disclose the future; and from the notes of birds, from their flight, and from omens, the truth was sought with studied variety, if anywhere it might be found.
