the great games.[44] The cause of this renewal was as follows: On the
day of the games, in the morning when the show had not yet begun, a
certain head of a family had driven a slave of his through the middle
of the circus while he was being flogged, tied to the fork:[45] after
this the games had been begun, as if the matter had nothing to do with
any religious difficulty. Soon afterward Titus Latinius, a plebeian,
had a dream, in which Jupiter appeared to him and said that the person
who danced before the games had displeased him; unless those games
were renewed on a splendid scale, danger would threaten the city:
let him go and announce this to the consuls. Though his mind was not
altogether free from religious awe, his reverence for the dignity of
the magistrates, lest he might become a subject for ridicule in the
mouths of all, overcame his religious fear. This delay cost him dear,
for he lost his son within a few days; and, that there might be no
doubt about the cause of this sudden calamity, the same vision,
presenting itself to him in the midst of his sorrow of heart, seemed
to ask him, whether he had been sufficiently requited for his contempt
of the deity; that a still heavier penalty threatened him, unless he
went immediately and delivered the message to the consuls. The matter
was now still more urgent. While, however, he still delayed and kept
putting it off, he was attacked by a severe stroke of disease, a
sudden paralysis. Then indeed the anger of the gods frightened him.
Wearied out therefore by his past sufferings and by those that
threatened him, he convened a meeting of his friends and relatives,
and, after he had detailed to them all he had seen and heard, and the
fact of Jupiter having so often presented himself to him in his sleep,
and the threats and anger of Heaven speedily fulfilled in his own
calamities, he was, with the unhesitating assent of all who were
present, conveyed in a litter into the forum to the presence of the
consuls. From the forum, by order of the consuls, he was carried into
the senate-house, and, after he had recounted the same story to the
senators, to the great surprise of all, behold another miracle: he who
had been carried into the senate-house deprived of the use of all his
limbs, is reported to have returned home on his own feet, after he had
discharged his duty.

The senate decreed that the games should be celebrated on as
magnificent a scale as possible. To those games