be forsaking their functions, since
the old rites had ceased to appeal to them. Mysterious and persistent
pestilence is a great tamer of human courage; it is a new experience
that man knows not how to meet, and in ancient life it was also a new
_religious_ experience.

The remedy was as new as the pestilence, and almost as pernicious.
During eight days Rome saw three pairs of deities reclining in the form
of images on couches, before which were spread tables covered with food
and drink. Whether in this first case they were taken out of the temples
and exposed to view in certain places, _e.g._ the forum, is not clear;
later on, in the days of _supplicationes_, of which more will be said
presently, they were visited in procession. The three pairs were Apollo
and Latona, Diana and Hercules, Mercurius and Neptunus; all of them
Greek, or, as in the case of Diana, Mercurius, and Neptunus, Roman
deities in their new Greek form. We cannot trace the special
applicability of all of them to the trouble they were thus invoked to
appease,--another point that suggests a complete revolution in the Roman
ways of contemplating divine beings. These are not functional _numina_,
but foreigners whose ways were only known to the manipulators of the
Sibylline utterances. They seem like quack remedies, of which the action
is unknown to the consumer.

New also, but better in its effect, was the publicity of these
proceedings, and the part taken in them by the whole population,
patrician and plebeian, men, women, and children. If we can trust Livy's
further statements, every one left his door open and kept open house,
inviting all to come in, whether known or unknown; all old quarrels were
made up, and no new ones suffered to begin; prisoners were freed from
their chains, and universal good-will prevailed. These eight days were
in fact kept as holidays, and doubtless by the novelty of the whole
scene the astute authorities hoped to inspire fresh hope and confidence,
and to divert attention from the prevailing misery, just as our soldiers
in India are induced to forget the presence of cholera in a station by
constant games and amusements. That this was really one leading object
of the whole show is not generally recognised by historians; but it
seems fully explained by the fact I mentioned just now, that in the
similar trouble of 349 B.C. recourse was had for the first time to _ludi
scenici_ in order to amuse the people. In the history of the H