ome to visit them without interference. Thus they
succeeded in seizing him and forced him to give all the requisite
information. According to the indications he furnished they offered
sacrifices, tunneled the hill, and conducted the superfluous water by
a secret canal into the plain, so that all of it was used up there and
none ran down into the sea.

_(BOOK 7, BOISSEVAIN.)_

VII, 24.--A certain Marcus Fabius, a patrician, who chanced to be the
father of two daughters, betrothed the elder to a Licinius Stolo, much
inferior to him in rank, and married the younger to Sulpicius Rufus,
who belonged to his own class. [Sidenote: FRAG. 27^1] NOW WHILE RUFUS
WAS MILITARY TRIBUNE, ONCE WHEN HE WAS IN THE FORUM HIS WIFE HAD A
VISIT FROM HER SISTER. AT THE ARRIVAL OF THE HUSBAND THE LICTOR,
ACCORDING TO SOME ANCIENT CUSTOM, KNOCKED AT THE DOOR. THE CLATTER
STARTLED THE WOMAN, WHO WAS NOT FAMILIAR WITH THIS PROCEDURE:
THEREUPON BOTH HER SISTER AND THE OTHERS PRESENT BURST OUT LAUGHING
AND SHE WAS MADE FUN OF AS A SIMPLETON. SHE TOOK THE MATTER AS A
SERIOUS AFFRONT AND ROUSED HER HUSBAND TO CANVASS FOR OFFICE. Stolo,
accordingly, incited by his wife, confided his intentions to Lucius
Sextius, one of his peers, and both forced their way into the
tribuneship; they thus overturned the good order of the State to such
an extent that for four years the people had no rulers, since these
men repeatedly obstructed the patrician elections. This state of
affairs would have continued for a still longer time, had not news
been brought that the Celtae were again marching upon Rome.

VII, 25.--It is related that after this a disaster befell Rome. The
level land between the Palatine and the Capitoline is said to have
become suddenly a yawning gulf, without any preceding earthquake or
other phenomenon such as usually takes place in nature on the occasion
of such developments. For a long time the chasm remained _in statu
quo_, and neither closed up in the slightest degree nor was to be
filled, albeit the Romans brought and cast into it masses of earth and
stones and all sorts of other material. In the midst of the Romans'
uncertainty an oracle was given them to the effect that the aperture
could in no way be closed except they should throw into the chasm
their best possession and that which was the chief source of their
strength: then the thing would cease, and the city should command
power inextinguishable. Still the uncertainty remained unreso