enta,[609] probably
following Varro; and to Virgil she was the "_vates fatidica_, cecinit
quae prima futuros Aeneadas magnos et nobile Pallanteum."

But Carmenta, Picus, Faunus, are dim mythical figures which for us can
have no bearing on Roman religious experience; it would be more to the
point to ask what was the original meaning and history of the word
_vates_, if the question were answerable in the absence of an early
Roman literature. All we can say about this is that this word had, as a
rule, a certain dignity about it, which enabled it eventually to stand
for a poet, and that it rarely has a sinister sense, unless accompanied
by some adjective specially used in order to give it.[610] The real word
for a quack is _hariolus_, and the fact that it is comparatively rare
suggests that the character it expresses was not a common one. It occurs
here and there in fragments of old plays, where, unluckily, we cannot be
quite sure whether it represents a Greek or a Latin idea. The following
lines from the Telamo of Ennius shows us the _hariolus_, as well as the
word _vates_ with a discreditable adjective attached:

sed superstitiosi vates impudentesque harioli
aut inertes, aut insani, aut quibus egestas imperat,
qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam,
quibu' divitias pollicentur, ab iis drachmam ipsi petunt.[611]

A more satisfactory bit of evidence as to the existence of the quack in
the second century B.C., when Greece and the East were beginning to pour
their unauthorised religionists into Italy, is the interesting passage
in old Cato's book on agriculture, in which he urges that the bailiff of
an estate should not be permitted to consult either a _haruspex_,
_augur_, _hariolus_, or _Chaldaeus_.[612] But on the whole, such little
evidence as we possess seems to confirm the view I hazarded just now,
that the overwhelming prestige of State authority at Rome discouraged
and discredited the quack diviner both in public and private life. His
work in private life was largely that of fortune-telling, of foretelling
the future in one sense or another; and this was exactly what the State
authorities never did and never countenanced, at any rate until the
stress of the Hannibalic war, and then only in a very limited sense.
Their object was a strictly religious one, to get the sanction of the
divine members of the community for the undertakings of the human ones.
Even the so-called Sibylline oracles, as we sa