Kitap 25
1
The longer the war continued, and the more men's minds as well as their fortunes were affected by the alternations of success and failure, so much the more did the citizens become the victims of superstitions, and those for the most part foreign ones. It seemed as though either the characters of men or the nature of the gods had undergone a sudden change. The Roman ritual was growing into disuse not only in secret and in private houses; even in public places, in the Forum and the Capitol, crowds of women were to be seen who were offering neither sacrifices nor prayers in accordance with ancient usage. Unauthorised sacrificers and diviners had got possession of men's minds and the numbers of their dupes were swelled by the crowds of country people whom poverty or fear had driven into the City, and whose fields had lain untilled owing to the length of the war or had been desolated by the enemy. These impostors found their profit in trading upon the ignorance of others, and they practiced their calling with as much effrontery as if they had been duly authorised by the State. Respectable citizens protested in private against the state of things, and ultimately the matter became a public scandal and formal complaint was made to the senate. The aediles and commissioners of police were severely reprimanded by the senate for not preventing these abuses, but when they attempted to remove the crowds from the Forum and destroy the altars and other preparations for their rites they narrowly escaped being roughly handled. As the mischief appeared to be too much for the inferior magistrates to deal with, M. Aemilius, the City praetor, was entrusted with the task of delivering the people from these superstitions. He read the resolution of the senate before the Assembly and gave notice that all those who had in their possession any manuals of divination or forms of prayers or sacrificial ritual in writing were to bring all their books and writings to him before the first of April, and no one was to use any strange or foreign form of sacrifice in any public or consecrated place.
