g, they said, that the original form of the
building should be changed. On the 21st of June, a day of bright
sunshine, the whole consecrated area of the temple was decorated with
chaplets and garlands. In marched soldiers, all men with names of good
omen, carrying branches of lucky trees:[380] then came the Vestal
Virgins accompanied by boys and girls, each of whom had father and
mother alive,[381] and they cleansed it all by sprinkling fresh water
from a spring or river.[382] Next, while the high priest, Plautius
Aelianus, dictated the proper formulae, Helvidius Priscus, the
praetor, first consecrated the site by a solemn sacrifice[383] of a
pig, a sheep and an ox, and then duly offering the entrails on an
altar of turf, he prayed to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, as the
guardian deities of the empire, to prosper the enterprise, and by
divine grace to bring to completion this house of theirs which human
piety had here begun. He then took hold of the chaplets to which the
ropes holding the foundation-stone were attached. At the same moment
the other magistrates and the priests and senators and knights and
large numbers of the populace in joyous excitement with one great
effort dragged the huge stone into its place. On every side gifts of
gold and silver were flung into the foundations, and blocks of virgin
ore unscathed by any furnace, just as they had come from the womb of
the earth. For the soothsayers had given out that the building must
not be desecrated by the use of stone or gold that had been put to any
other purpose. The height of the roof was raised. This was the only
change that religious scruples would allow, and it was felt to be the
only point in which the former temple lacked grandeur.

FOOTNOTES:

[331] We now reach the year A.D. 70. Vespasian had already
been consul under Claudius in 51.

[332] In the absence of both consuls.

[333] i.e. Sohaemus, Antiochus, and Agrippa (cp. ii. 81).

[334] Cp. ii. 85.

[335] Cp. iii. 52.

[336] Vespasian's freedman (cp. iii. 12, 28.)

[337] The elder brother of Galba's adopted son Piso.

[338] See ii. 65. He must by now have ceased to be absentee
governor.

[339] It was to the command of this legion that Galba promoted
Antonius (see ii. 86).

[340] Varus had served under Corbulo in Syria.

[341] In his life of _Agricola_ Tacitus speaks of Domitian's
red face as 'his natural