Ab urbe condita

However, the first introduction of plays, though intended as a means of religious expiation, did not relieve the mind from religious terrors nor the body from the inroads of disease.

Owing to an inundation of the Tiber, the Circus was flooded in the middle of the Games, and this produced an unspeakable dread; it seemed as though the gods had turned their faces from men and despised all that was done to propitiate their wrath.

[*]( Continued Pestilence —Fresh Attempts at Proitiation. ) C. Genucius and L. Aemilius Mamercus were the new consuls, each for the second time. The fruitless search for effective means of propitiation was affecting the minds of the people more than disease was affecting

their bodies. It is said to have been discovered that the older men remembered that a pestilence had once been assuaged by the Dictator driving in a nail. The senate believed this to be a religious obligation, and ordered a Dictator to be nominated for

that purpose. L. Manlius Imperiosus was nominated, and he appointed L. Pinarius as his Master of the Horse. There is an ancient instruction written in archaic letters which runs: Let him who is the praetor maximus fasten a nail on the Ides of September. This notice was fastened up on the right side of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, next to the chapel

of Minerva. This nail is said to have marked the number of the year —written records being scarce in those days —and was for that reason placed under the protection of Minerva because she was the inventor

of numbers. Cincius, a careful student of monuments of this kind, asserts that at Volsinii also nails were fastened in the temple of Nortia, an Etruscan goddess, to indicate the number of

the year. It was in accordance with this direction that the consul Horatius dedicated the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in the year following the expulsion of the kings[*](Livy obviously means to imply that the first nail was then driven in and the “custom” observed annually by the consuls on Sept. 13. If this date happened to fall during an interregnum then it was necessary to nominate a Dictator to perform the office.); from the consuls the ceremony of fastening the nails passed to the Dictators, because they possessed greater authority. As the custom had been subsequently dropped, it was felt to be of sufficient importance to require the appointment of a Dictator.

L. Manlius was accordingly nominated, but, regarding his appointment as due to political rather than to religious reasons and eager to command in the war with the Hernici, he caused a very angry feeling among the men liable to serve by the inconsiderate way in which he conducted the enrolment. At last, in consequence of the unanimous resistance offered by the tribunes of the plebs, he gave way, either voluntarily or through compulsion, and laid down his Dictatorship.

[*](Impeachment of Manlius). —This did not, however, prevent his impeachment the following year, when Q. Servilius Ahala and L. Genucius were consuls, the prosecutor being M. Pomponius, one of the tribunes of the plebs. He had incurred universal hatred through the unfeeling severity with which he had carried out the enlistment; the citizens had not only been fined, but subjected to personal ill-treatment, some scourged and others imprisoned because they had not answered to their names.

But what men most loathed was his brutal temperament, and the epithet “Imperiosus” (masterful) which had been fastened on him from his unblushing cruelty, an epithet utterly repugnant to a free State. The effects of his cruelty were felt quite as much by his nearest kindred, by his own blood as by strangers. Amongst other charges which the tribune brought against him was his treatment of his young son. It was alleged that although guilty of no offence he had banished him from the City, from his home and household gods, had forbidden him to appear in public in the Forum or to associate with those of his own age, and had consigned him to servile work, almost to the imprisonment of a workshop.

Here the youth, of high birth, the son of a Dictator, was to learn by daily suffering how rightly his father was called “Imperiosus.” And for what offence? Simply because he was lacking in eloquence, in readiness of speech! Ought not this natural defect to have been helped and remedied by the father, if there were a spark of humanity in him, instead of being punished and branded by persecution? Not even do brute beasts show less care and protection to their offspring if they happen to be sickly or deformed.

But L. Manlius actually aggravated his son's misfortune by fresh misfortunes, and increased his natural dullness and quenched any faint glimmerings of ability which he might have shown by the clodhopper's life to which he was condemned and the boorish bringing up amongst cattle to which he had to submit. The youth himself was the last to be exasperated by these accusations brought against his father. On the contrary, he was so indignant at finding himself made the ground of the charges against his father and the deep resentment they created that he was determined to let gods and men see that he preferred standing by his father to helping his enemies.