37.3
Before
the consuls left for their provinces it was resolved that various portents
should be expiated according to the directions of the pontiffs. The temple of
Juno-Lucina in Rome was struck so seriously by lightning that the pediment
and great doors were much damaged. At Puteoli, one of the gates and
numerous portions of the wall were similarly struck and two men killed. At
Nursea it was definitely reported that a thunderstorm suddenly burst out of a
cloudless sky; there also two men were killed, both freemen. The people of
Tusculum announced that a shower of earth had fallen in their district, and at
Reate a mule was said to have had a foal. These portents were duly expiated
and the Latin Festival was celebrated a second time owing to the Laurentians
not having received their due portion of the sacrifice. To allay the religious
fears which these various incidents aroused, a solemn intercession was
offered, as directed by the Keepers of the Sacred Books, to those deities
which, after consulting the rolls, they named. Ten free-born boys and ten
maidens, all of whose fathers and mothers were alive, were employed about
that sacrifice, and the Keepers of the Sacred Books offered up sacrifices of
sucklings in the night. Before his departure, P. Cornelius Scipio erected an
arch on the Capitol facing the road up to the temple, with seven gilded
human statues and two equestrian ones. He also set up in front of the arch
two marble basins. During this time forty-three of the Aetolian leading men,
including Damocritus and his brother, were brought to Rome by two cohorts
sent by Manius Acilius. On their arrival they were thrown into the
Lautumiae, and the cohorts were ordered to the army. A deputation came
from Ptolemy and Cleopatra to offer their congratulations on the expulsion
of Antiochus from Greece by the consul Acilius, and to urge the senate to
send an army into Asia, as not only in Asia but even throughout Syria there
was a universal feeling of alarm. The two sovereigns declared their readiness
to carry out the behests of the senate, and a vote of thanks to them was
passed. Each member of the deputation received a present of 4000 ases.
