t applied also to the two pairs of Gauls
and Greeks just mentioned? But I need not pursue the subject further; we
may be satisfied to reflect that from an anthropological point of view
the Argei need never have been anything more than puppets.[689]

But to return to the religious history of the war. It would seem that
the extraordinary series of performances ordered during the depression
and despair that followed Cannae had succeeded for the time in quieting
the _religio_. Fabius Pictor too had returned from Delphi,[690] and
brought home in what seems to be hexameter verse instructions as to the
worship of certain deities, with injunctions to the Romans to send gifts
to the Pythian Apollo if prosperity should return to them, and ending
with the significant words, "lasciviam (disorderly excitement) a vobis
prohibete," which may be interpreted as "keep quiet, and do not get into
a religious panic." The hexameters were Greek, but were translated for
the benefit of the people; and Fabius publicly told how he had himself
obeyed the voice of the oracle by sacrificing to the deities it named,
and had worn the wreath, the sign that he was accomplishing religious
work, during the whole of his journey home. This wreath he now deposited
on the altar of Apollo. This was in 216, and it is remarkable that we
hear of no new outbreak of _prodigia_, the normal symptom of _religio_,
till the next year. Then we have a list; as Livy says,[691] "simplices
et religiosi homines" were ready with them at any time. A panic arose in
Rome, not strictly of a religious kind, which shows the nervousness of
the population; a rumour went about that an army had been seen on the
Janiculum, but men who were on the spot refuted it. In this case the
Sibylline books were not consulted, but Etruscan haruspices were called
in, who simply ordered a _supplicatio_ of the new kind, at the
_pulvinaria_. This is the first, or almost the first instance of these
experts being consulted; earlier statements of the kind are probably
apocryphal, as I pointed out in the last lecture. It is not clear why
the authorities had recourse to them at this moment; but I am inclined
to think that the old remedies even of the Sibylline books and their
keepers were getting stale, and that while it was thought undesirable to
excite the people by new rites, it was felt that the familiar ones might
gain some new prestige by being recommended by new experts. The old
prescription, given by