39.8
During
the following year the consuls Sp. Postumius Albinus and Q. Marcius
Philippus had their attention diverted from the army and the wars, and the
administration of provinces, by the necessity of putting down a domestic
conspiracy. The provinces were allotted to the praetors as follows: the civic
jurisdiction to T. Maenius, the alien to M. Licinius Lucullus, Sardinia to C.
Aurelius Scaurus, Sicily to P. Cornelius Sulla, Hither Spain to L. Q.
Crispinus, and Further Spain to C. Calpurnius Piso. Both the consuls were
charged with the investigation into the secret conspiracies. A low-born
Greek went into Etruria first of all, but did not bring with him any of the
numerous arts which that most accomplished of all nations has introduced
amongst us for the cultivation of mind and body. He was a hedge-priest and
wizard, not one of those who imbue men's minds with error by professing to
teach their superstitions openly for money, but a hierophant of secret
nocturnal mysteries. At first these were divulged to only a few; then they
began to spread amongst both men and women, and the attractions of wine
and feasting increased the number of his followers. When they were heated
with wine and the nightly commingling of men and women, those of tender
age with their seniors, had extinguished all sense of modesty, debaucheries
of every kind commenced; each had pleasures at hand to satisfy the lust he
was most prone to. Nor was the mischief confined to the promiscuous
intercourse of men and women; false witness, the forging of seals and
testaments, and false informations, all proceeded from the same source, as
also poisonings and murders of families where the bodies could not even be
found for burial. Many crimes were committed by treachery; most by
violence, which was kept secret, because the cries of those who were being
violated or murdered could not be heard owing to the noise of drums and
cymbals.
