39.9
This
pestilential evil penetrated from Etruria to Rome like a contagious disease.
At first, the size and extent of the City allowing more scope and impunity for
such mischiefs, served to conceal them, but information at length reached the
consul, mainly through the following channel. P. Aebutius, whose father had
served in the cavalry and was dead, had been left under guardians. On their
death he had been brought up under the care of his mother Duronia and his
stepfather T. Sempronius Rutilus. The mother was completely in her
husband's hands; and as the stepfather had so exercised his guardianship that
he was not in a position to give a proper account for it, he was anxious that
his ward should either be put out of the way or placed at his mercy through
his getting some hold upon him. One way of corrupting the youth's morals
was through the Bacchanalia. The mother told the youth that she had made a
vow on his behalf during an illness, namely, that as soon as he recovered she
would initiate him into the Bacchic mysteries, and in that way would through
the kindness of the gods discharge the vow by which she was bound. He
must preserve his chastity for ten days, then after supper on the tenth day she
would take him to a place set apart for the rite of initiation.
There was a freedwoman named Hispala Fecenia who, though she
was a courtesan, was worthy of better things than the gains to which she had
been accustomed from her girlhood, and by which she supported herself
even after she had been manumitted. As their houses were near one another,
an intimacy had sprung up between her and Aebutius, which was in no way
injurious to either his reputation or his purse. She sought his company and
his love unsolicited, and as his parents kept him close in every way, he was
maintained by the girl's generosity. Her passion for him had gone so far that
after her guardian had died, and she was no longer a ward, she begged the
tribunes and the praetor to appoint a guardian for her. Then she could make
a will and she constituted Aebutius her sole heir.
