XXIV.  Rome meanwhile was disturbed by the anger of the patricians towards the plebeians, especially on account of the banishment of Marcius, and by many portents which were observed both by the priests and by private persons, one of which was as follows.  There was one Titus Latinus, a man of no great note, but a respectable citizen and by no means addicted to superstition.  He dreamed that he saw Jupiter face to face, and that the god bade him tell the Senate that “they had sent a bad dancer before his procession, and one who was very displeasing to him.”

On first seeing this vision he said that he disregarded it; but after it had occurred a second and a third time he had the unhappiness to see his son sicken and die, while he himself suddenly lost the use of his limbs.

He told this story in the senate house, to which he had been carried on a litter; and as soon as he had told it, he found his bodily strength return, rose, and walked home.

The senators, greatly astonished, inquired into the matter.  It was found that a slave, convicted of some crime, had been ordered by his master to be flogged through the market-place, and then put to death.  While this was being done, and the wretch was twisting his body in every kind of contortion as he writhed under the blows, the procession by chance was following after him.  Many of those who walked in it were shocked at the unseemliness of the spectacle, and disgusted at its inhumanity, but no one did anything more than reproach and execrate a man who treated his slaves with so much cruelty.

At that period men treated their slaves with great kindness, because the master himself worked and ate in their company, and so could sympathise more with them.  The great punishment for a slave who had done wrong was to make him carry round the neighbourhood the piece of wood on which the pole of a waggon is rested.  The slave who has done this and been seen by the neighbours and friends, lost his credit, and was called furcifer, for the Romans call that piece of timber furca, “a fork,” which the Greeks call hypostates, “a supporter.”

XXV.  So when Latinus related his dream to the senators, and they were wondering who the bad and unacceptable dancer could be who had led the procession, some of them remembered the slave who had been flogged through the market-place and there put to death.  At the instance of the priests, the master of the slave was punished for his cruelty, and the procession and ceremonies were performed anew in honour of the gods.  Hence we may see how wisely Numa arranged this, among other matters of ceremonial.  Whenever the magistrates or priests were engaged in any religious rite, a herald walked before them crying in a loud voice “Hoc age.”  The meaning of the phrase is, “Do this,” meaning to tell the people to apply their minds entirely to the religious ceremony, and not to allow any thought of worldly things to distract their attention, because men as a rule only attend to such matters by putting a certain constraint on their thoughts.