39.14
When
she had finished giving her evidence, she fell on her knees and again begged
the consul to send her abroad. He asked his mother-in-law to set apart some
portion of her house where she could take up her abode. An upper room was
assigned to her which was approached by a flight of steps from the street;
these were blocked up and an entrance made from inside the house. All
Fecenia's effects were at once transferred, and her household slaves brought
in, and Aebutius was ordered to take up his quarters with a client of the
consul's. As both his informants were now in his hands, Postumius reported
the affair to the senate. Everything was explained as it occurred, the
information which he had first received, and then that which he had obtained
in answer to his questions. The senate were greatly alarmed for the public
safety; these secret conspiracies and nocturnal gatherings were a danger to
the State; and they were alarmed for themselves, lest their own relations and
friends might be involved. They passed a vote of thanks to the consul for
having conducted his investigations so carefully and without creating any
public disturbance. Then, arming the consuls with extraordinary powers,
they placed in their hands the inquiry into the proceedings at the Bacchanalia
and the nocturnal rites. They were to take care that Aebutius and Fecenia
suffered no injury for the information they had given, and they were to offer
rewards to induce other informers to come forward. Those who presided
over these mysteries were to be sought out not only in Rome, but
everywhere where people were in the habit of assembling, so that they might
be delivered up to the consuls. Edicts were published in Rome and
throughout Italy forbidding any who had been initiated from meeting
together to celebrate their mysteries or performing any rites of a similar
character, and above all, strict inquiry was to be made in the case of those
who attended gatherings in which crime and debauchery had occurred. These
were the measures which the senate decreed. The consuls sent orders to the
curule aediles to search out all the priests of those rites and, when they were
arrested, to keep them in such custody as they thought best until their trial.
The plebeian aediles were to see that no rites were performed in open day;
the police commissioners were instructed to post watches throughout the
City and take care that no nocturnal gatherings took place; and as a
precaution against fires, five men were appointed to assist the commissioners
and take charge of the buildings assigned to them on this side the Tiber.