d giving rise to the most heinous crimes,
unparalleled unchastity, falsifying of testaments, and murdering by
poison. More than 7000 men were sentenced to punishment, most of them
to death, on this account, and rigorous enactments were issued as to
the future; yet they did not succeed in repressing the ongoings, and
six years later (574) the magistrate to whom the matter fell
complained that 3000 men more had been condemned and still there
appeared no end of the evil.

Repressive Measures

Of course all rational men were agreed in the condemnation of these
spurious forms of religion--as absurd as they were injurious to the
commonwealth: the pious adherents of the olden faith and the partisans
of Hellenic enlightenment concurred in their ridicule of, and
indignation at, this superstition. Cato made it an instruction to his
steward, "that he was not to present any offering, or to allow any
offering to be presented on his behalf, without the knowledge and
orders of his master, except at the domestic hearth and on the
wayside-altar at the Compitalia, and that he should consult no
-haruspex-, -hariolus-, or -Chaldaeus-." The well-known question, as
to how a priest could contrive to suppress laughter when he met his
colleague, originated with Cato, and was primarily applied to the
Etruscan -haruspex-. Much in the same spirit Ennius censures in true
Euripidean style the mendicant soothsayers and their adherents:

-Sed superstitiosi vates impudentesque arioli,
Aut inertes aut insani aut quibus egestas imperat,
Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam,
Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab eis drachumam ipsi petunt.-

But in such times reason from the first plays a losing game against
unreason. The government, no doubt, interfered; the pious impostors
were punished and expelled by the police; every foreign worship not
specially sanctioned was forbidden; even the consulting of the
comparatively innocent lot-oracle of Praeneste was officially
prohibited in 512; and, as we have already said, those who took part
in the Bacchanalia were rigorously prosecuted. But, when once men's
heads are thoroughly turned, no command of the higher authorities
avails to set them right again. How much the government was obliged
to concede, or at any rate did concede, is obvious from what has been
stated. The Roman custom, under which the state consulted Etruscan
sages in certain emergencies and the government accordingly took steps