was distributed at
four asses the modius, or at most one quarter of the normal price. When
the new consuls entered on office on the ides of the following March,
further religious steps were at once taken; the political atmosphere was
charged with religiosity. On the first day of their office the consuls
were directed by the Senate, doubtless with the sanction of the
pontifices, to _sacrifice to such deities as they might select_, with a
special prayer for the success of the new war which Senate and people
(the latter by a clever anticipation) are contemplating. Haruspices from
Etruria had been adroitly procured, and no doubt primed, who reported
that the gods had accepted this prayer, and that the examination of the
victims portended extension of the Roman frontier, victory, and
triumph.[708] Yet, in spite of all this, the people were not yet
willing; in almost all the centuries, when the voting for the war took
place, they rejected the proposal of the Senate. Then the consul
Sulpicius was put up to address them, and at the end of Livy's version
of his speech we find him clinching his political arguments with
religious ones. "Ite in suffragium, bene iuvantibus dis, et quae Patres
censuerunt, vos iubete. Huius vobis sententiae non consul modo auctor
est, sed etiam di immortales; qui mihi sacrificanti ... laeta omnia
prosperaque portendere." Thus adjured, the people yielded; and as a
reward, and to stifle any _religio_ that might be troubling them, they
are treated to a _supplicatio_ of three days, including an "_obsecratio
circa omnia pulvinaria_" for the happy result of the war; and once more,
after the levy was over,--a heavy tax on the patience of the
people,--the consul made vows of _ludi_ and a special gift to Jupiter,
in case the State should be intact and prospering five years from that
day.[709]

Exactly the same religious machinery was used a few years later to gain
the consent of the people for a war of far less obvious necessity,--that
with Antiochus of Syria. It was at once successful. The haruspices were
again on the spot and gave the same report; and then, _solutis religione
animis_, the centuries sanctioned the war. The vow that followed, of
which Livy gives a modernised wording, was for _ludi_ to last ten
continuous days, and for gifts of money at all the _pulvinaria_, where
now, as we gather from these same chapters, the images of the gods were
displayed on their couches during the greater part of the ye