The task of restoring the Capitol[377] was entrusted
to Lucius 53 Vestinus, who, though only a
knight, yet in reputation and influence could rank
with the highest. He summoned all the soothsayers,[378]
and they recommended that the ruins of the former
temple should be carried away to the marshes[379]
and a new temple erected on the same site: the
gods were unwilling, they said, that the original form
of the building should be changed. On the 21st
of June, a day of bright sunshine, the whole consecrated
area of the temple was decorated with chaplets and
garlands. In marched soldiers, all men with names
of good omen, carrying branches of lucky trees:[380]
then came the Vestal Virgins accompanied by boys and
girls, each of whom had father and mother alive,[381]
and they cleansed it all by sprinkling fresh water
from a spring or river.[382] Next, while the high priest,
Plautius Aelianus, dictated the proper formulae, Helvidius
Priscus, the praetor, first consecrated the site by
a solemn sacrifice[383] of a pig, a sheep and an ox,
and then duly offering the entrails on an altar of
turf, he prayed to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, as the
guardian deities of the empire, to prosper the enterprise,
and by divine grace to bring to completion this house
of theirs which human piety had here begun. He
then took hold of the chaplets to which the ropes
holding the foundation-stone were attached. At
the same moment the other magistrates and the priests
and senators and knights and large numbers of the
populace in joyous excitement with one great effort
dragged the huge stone into its place. On every
side gifts of gold and silver were flung into the
foundations, and blocks of virgin ore unscathed by
any furnace, just as they had come from the womb of
the earth. For the soothsayers had given out that
the building must not be desecrated by the use of
stone or gold that had been put to any other purpose.
The height of the roof was raised. This was the
only change that religious scruples would allow, and
it was felt to be the only point in which the former
temple lacked grandeur.
FOOTNOTES:
[331] We now reach the year
A.D. 70. Vespasian had already
been
consul under Claudius in 51.
[332] In the absence of both
consuls.
[333] i.e. Sohaemus,
Antiochus, and Agrippa (cp. ii. 81).
[334] Cp. ii. 85.
[335] Cp. iii. 52.
[336] Vespasian’s freedman
(cp. iii. 12, 28.)
[337] The elder brother of
Galba’s adopted son Piso.
[338] See ii. 65. He
must by now have ceased to be absentee
governor.
[339] It was to the command
of this legion that Galba promoted
Antonius
(see ii. 86).
[340] Varus had served under
Corbulo in Syria.
[341] In his life of Agricola
Tacitus speaks of Domitian’s
red
face as ‘his natural bulwark against shame’.
Copyrights
Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
