gard of that prodigy; and the decemvirs, from the books, directed
the same religious ceremonies which had been performed on an occasion
of the same kind. They ordered, besides, a hymn to be sung through the
city by thrice nine virgins, and an offering to be made to imperial
Juno. The consul, Caius Aurelius, took care that all these matters
were performed according to the direction of the decemvirs. The hymn
was composed by Publius Licinius Tegula, as a similar one had been, in
the memory of their fathers, by Livius.

13. All religious scruples were fully removed by expiations; at Locri,
too, the affair of the sacrilege had been thoroughly investigated by
Quintus Minucius, and the money replaced in the treasury out of the
effects of the guilty. When the consuls wished to set out to their
provinces, a number of private persons, to whom the third payment
became due that year, of the money which they had lent to the public
in the consulate of Marcus Valerius and Marcus Claudius, applied to
the senate. The consuls, however, declared that the treasury being
scarcely sufficient for the exigencies of a new war, in which a great
fleet and great armies must be employed, there were no means of paying
them at present. The senate could not stand against them when they
complained, that "if the state intended to use, for the purpose of the
Macedonian war, the money which had been lent for the Punic war, as
one war constantly arose after another, what would be the issue,
but that, in return for their generosity, their property would be
confiscated as for some crime?" The demands of the private creditors
being equitable, and the state being in no capacity of discharging
the debt, they decreed a middle course between equity and convenience;
resolving that "whereas many of them mentioned that lands were
frequently exposed to sale, and that they themselves wished to become
purchasers, they should, therefore, have liberty to purchase any
belonging to the public, and which lay within fifty miles of the city.
That the consuls should make a valuation of these, and impose on each
acre one _as_, as an acknowledgment that the land was the property of
the public, in order that, when the people should become able to pay,
if any one chose rather to have the money than the land, he might
restore it." The private creditors accepted the terms with joy; and
that land was called Trientius and Tabulius, because it was given in
lieu of the third part of th