m up. The Senate decreed that if he could find some one to
take the oath for him, the consuls might, if they chose, approach the
tribune with a view to getting a relieving _plebiscitum_; this was duly
obtained, and he took the oath by proxy. In his year of office as aedile
we find him giving expensive _ludi Romani_; and in 184 he only missed
the praetorship by an unlucky accident.[728] In this story we find the
self-assertion of an individual supported by Senate, consuls, and people
in breaking loose from the antiquated restrictions of a bygone age, and
we cannot but sympathise with it. But Roman history is full of
surprises, and among these I know none more amazing than the successful
attempt of Augustus two centuries later to revive this priesthood with
all its absurdities.[729]

The self-assertion of members of the great families against the _ius
divinum_ was inevitable, and in the instances just noticed the attitude
of compromise taken up by the government was only what was to be
expected in an age of stress and change and new ideas. But in less than
twenty years after the peace with Carthage this government found itself
suddenly face to face with what may be called a religious rebellion
chiefly among the lower orders, including women; and the authorities
unhesitatingly reverted to the position of conscientious guardians of
the religious system of the City-state. They began to realise that they
had been holding a wolf by the ears ever since the beginning of the
Hannibalic war; that they had a population to deal with which was no
longer pure Roman or even pure Italian, and that even the genuine Romans
themselves were liable to be moved by new currents of religious feeling.
During the war they had done all that was possible to meet the mental as
well as the material troubles of this population, even to the length of
introducing the worship, under certain restrictions, of the great
Phrygian Mother of the gods. But now, in 186, the sudden outbreak of
Dionysiac orgies in Italy showed them that all their remedies were stale
and insufficient, and that the wolf was getting loose in their hands.

Dionysus had long been housed at Rome, under the name of Liber, in that
temple of Ceres, Liber, and Libera which was discussed in detail in my
eleventh lecture.[730] But it is not likely that many Romans recognised
the identity of Liber and Dionysus, and it is quite certain that the
characteristic features of the Dionysiac ritual we