31.12
A
despatch was read in the House from Q. Minucius, the praetor commanding
in Bruttium, in which he stated that money had been stolen by night from the
treasury of Proserpine at Locri and there was no clue to the perpetrators of
the crime. The senate were extremely angry at finding that acts of sacrilege
were still going on and that not even the example of Pleminius, notorious
alike for the guilt and the punishment which so swiftly followed, acted in any
way as a deterrent. C. Aurelius was instructed to write to the praetor and tell
him that the senate wished an enquiry to be made into the circumstances of
the robbery on the same lines as the one which the praetor M. Pomponius
had conducted three years previously. Whatever money was discovered was
to be replaced, and the deficit made up; and should it be thought necessary
expiatory sacrifices were to be offered in accordance with the instructions of
the pontiffs on the previous occasions. Their anxiety to atone for the
violation of the temple was made all the keener by the simultaneous
announcements of portents from numerous localities. In Lucania it was
alleged that the heavens had been on fire; at Privernum the sun had been
glowing red through the whole of a cloudless day; at the temple of Juno
Sospita in Lanuvium a terrible noise was heard in the night. Numerous
monstrous births were also reported amongst the Sabines a child was born of
doubtful sex; another similar case was discovered where the child was
already sixteen years old; at Frusino a lamb was yeaned with a head like a
pig; at Sinuessa a pig was littered with a human head, and on the public
domain-land in Lucania a foal appeared with five feet. These were all
regarded as horrid and monstrous products of a nature which had gone
astray to produce strange and hybrid growths; the hermaphrodites were
looked upon as of especially evil omen and were ordered to be at once
carried out to sea just as quite recently in the consulships of C. Claudius and
M. Nero similar ill-omened births had been disposed of. At the same time the
senate ordered the decemvirs to consult the Sacred Books about this
portent. Following the instructions found there, they ordered the same
ceremonies to be observed as on the occasion of its last appearance. A hymn
was to be sung through the City by three choirs, each consisting of nine
maidens, and a gift was to be carried to Queen Juno. The consul C. Aurelius
saw that the instructions of the Keepers of the Sacred Books were carried
out. The hymn in our fathers' days was composed by Livius, on this occasion
by P. Licinius Tegula.
