men of the sacred books; and no treasure could have been
kept with more care and devotion than these mysterious rolls.

The temple in which these books were kept was the grandest edifice Rome
had yet known. When Tarquin proposed to build it he found the chosen
site already occupied by many holy places, sacred to the gods of the
Sabines, the first dwellers on the Capitoline Hill. The augurs consulted
the gods to see if these holy places could safely be removed, to make
room for the new temple. The answer came that they might take away all
except the holy places of the god of Youth and of Terminus, the god of
boundaries. This was accounted a happy augury, for it seemed to mean
that the city should always retain its youth and that no enemy should
remove its boundaries. And when the foundations of the temple were dug a
human head was found, which was held to be a sign that the Capitoline
Hill should be the head of all the earth. So a great temple was built,
and consecrated to Jupiter and to Juno and to Minerva, the greatest of
the Etruscan gods. This edifice, afterwards known as the Capitol, was
the most sacred and revered edifice of later Rome.

In the vaults of this temple the sacred books of the Sibyl were
sedulously kept, and here they were consulted from time to time, as
occasions arose in the history of the city when divine guidance seemed
necessary. None of the people were permitted to gaze within the sacred
cell in which they lay. Only the augurs consulted them, and the word of
the augurs had to be taken for what they revealed. It may be that the
augurs themselves invented all that they told, for the books at length
perished in the flames, and no man knows what secret lore they really
contained.

It was during the wars of Sulla and Marius (83 B.C.) that this disaster
occurred. The Capitol was burned, and with it those famous oracles,
which had so long directed the counsels of the nation. Their loss threw
Rome into the deepest consternation, the loss of the Capitol itself
seeming small beside that of these famous scrolls.

To replace them as far as possible, the senate sent ambassadors to the
various temples of Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor, within which were
Sibyls, or oracle-speaking priestesses. These collected such oracles
referring to Rome as they could find, about one thousand lines in all,
and brought them to Rome, where they were placed in the same locality in
the new Capitol that they had occupied in the