[-15-] While mortals were being influenced by money to behave themselves so, Heaven at the very beginning of the next year by striking with a thunderbolt the statue of Jupiter erected on the Alban hill, delayed the return of Ptolemy some little time.  For when they had recourse to the Sibylline verses they found written in them this very passage:  “If the king of Egypt come requesting some aid, refuse him not friendship altogether, nor yet succor him with any great force:  otherwise, you will have both toils and dangers.”  Thereupon, amazed at the coincidence between the verses and the events of the time, they were persuaded by Gaius Cato the tribune to rescind all their decisions in the case.  This was the way the oracle was given, and it was made public by Cato (for it was forbidden to announce to the populace any of the Sibylline statements unless the senate voted it).  Yet as soon as the sense of the verses, as usually happens, began to be talked about, he was afraid that it might be concealed, led the priests before the populace and there compelled them to utter the oracle before the senate had given them any instructions.  The more scruples they had against doing so, the more insistent[50] was the multitude. [-16-] Cato’s wish prevailed; it was written in the Latin tongue and proclaimed.  After this they gave their opinions:  some were for assigning the restoration of Ptolemy to Spinther without an army and others urged that Pompey with two lictors should escort him home (Ptolemy, on learning of the oracle, had preferred this latter request and his letter was read in public by Aulus Plautius, the tribune).  The senators then, fearing that Pompey would by this means obtain still greater power, opposed it, using the matter of the grain as an excuse.

All this happened in the consulship of Lucius Philippus and Gnaeus Marcellinus.  Ptolemy, when he heard of it, refused the favor of restoration, went to Ephesus, and passed his time in the temple of the goddess.

[-17-] The year before a peculiar incident, which still has some bearing upon history, had taken place.  It was this.  The law expressly forbids any two persons of the same clan to hold the same priesthood at the same time.  Now Spinther the consul was anxious to place his son Cornelius Spinther among the augurs, and when Faustus, the son of Sulla, of the Cornelian gens had been enrolled before him, took his son out of the clan and put him in that of Manlius Torquatus, and thus though the letter of the law was preserved, its spirit was broken.

[B.C. 56 (a.u. 698)]