Camillus

The man gave eager hearing to all this, and consented to a conference, supposing that he was going to hear some deep secrets. But the Roman led him along little by little, conversing as he went, until they were some way beyond the city gate, when he seized him bodily, being a sturdier man than he, and with the help of comrades who came running up from the camp, mastered him completely and handed him over to the generals.

Thus constrained, and perceiving that fate’s decrees were not to be evaded, the man revealed secret oracles regarding his native city, to the effect that it could not be captured until the Alban lake, after leaving its bed and making new channels for itself, should be driven back by the enemy, deflected from its course, and prevented from mingling with the sea.

The Senate, on hearing this, was at great loss what to do, and thought it well to send an embassy to Delphi to consult the god. The envoys were men of great repute and influence, Cossus Licinius, Valerius Potitus, and Fabius Ambustus, who made their voyage and Came back with the responses of the god. One of these told them that certain ancestral rites connected with the so-called Latin festivals had been unduly neglected;

another bade them by all means to keep the water of the Alban lake away from the sea and force it back into its ancient bed, or, if they could not effect this, by means of canals and trenches to divert it into the plain and dissipate it. On receipt of these responses the priests performed the neglected sacrifices, and the people sallied out into the fields and diverted the course of the water.

In the tenth year of the war,[*](396 B.C.) the Senate abolished the other magistracies and appointed Camillus dictator. After choosing Cornelius Scipio as his master of horse, in the first place he made solemn vows to the gods that, in case the war had a glorious ending, he would celebrate the great games in their honour, and dedicate a temple to a goddess whom the Romans call Mater Matuta.

From the sacred rites used in the worship of this goddess, she might be held to be almost identical with Leucothea. The women bring a serving-maid into the sanctuary and beat her with rods, then drive her forth again; they embrace their nephews and nieces in preference to their own children; and their conduct at the sacrifice resembles that of the nurses of Dionysus, or that of Ino under the afflictions put upon her by her husband’s concubine. After his vows, Camillus invaded the country of the Faliscans and conquered them in a great battle, together with the Capenates who came up to their aid.