made a blunder in putting the _exta_ of a victim on the
altar;[696] only too ready, it may have been, to take an opportunity of
getting free of those numerous taboos which deprived the priest of
Jupiter of all possibility of active life. Such a conjecture finds
support in the curious fact that his successor was a youth of such bad
character that his relations induced the pontifex maximus to select him
for the sacred post, in hopes that the restrictive discipline he would
have to undergo might improve his morals and make him a better
citizen.[697] About the later history of this youth I may have something
to say in the next lecture. Again, we find _religio_ of the scrupulous
kind sadly worrying the stout old warrior Marcellus shortly before his
death[698]: "Aliae atque aliae obiectae animo religiones tenebant." One
of these _religiones_ was a curious one; he had vowed a temple of Honos
and Virtus--two deities together; and the pontifices made difficulties,
insisting that two deities could not inhabit the same _cella_, for if it
should be struck by lightning, how were you to tell, in conducting the
_procuratio_, to which of them to sacrifice? The difficulty was solved
by building two temples. Such quaintnesses of the old type of religious
idea are thus still found, but they are becoming mere survivals.

The _prodigia_ continue, and occasionally, as a new crisis in the war
was known to be approaching, became exacerbated. In 208, just before the
old consul Marcellus left the city to meet his death, he and his
colleague were terribly pestered with them, and could not succeed in
their sacrificing (_litare_). For many days they failed to secure the
_pax deorum_.[699] When it was known that Hasdrubal was on his way from
Spain, and that the greatest peril of the war was approaching, special
steps were taken to make sure of that _pax_.[700] The pontifices ordered
that twenty-seven maidens--a number of magical significance both in
Greece and Italy[701]--should chant a _carmen_ composed by the poet
Livius Andronicus; and in the elaborate ritual that followed, as the
result of the striking of the temple of Juno on the Aventine by
lightning, the decemviri and haruspices from Etruria also had a share.
The procession of the maidens, singing and dancing through the city till
they reached the temple of Juno by the Clivus Publicius, was a new
feature in ritual, and must have been a striking one. Doubtless it was
all a part of a deliberate