[21]
Well, I hear what gods have been offended and to whom atonement is due; but
I want to know on account of what offences committed by men they have been
offended. “On account of the games having been carelessly
exhibited and polluted.” What games? I appeal to you, O Lentulus;
for the sacred cars and chariots, the singing, the sports, the libations,
and feasts of the public games belong to your priesthood; and I appeal to
you, O pontiffs, to whom those who prepare the banquet for the all-good and
all-powerful Jupiter report it if
anything has been neglected or done improperly, and if you give sentence
that it shall be so, those ceremonies are celebrated anew and repeated over
again. What games are they which have been exhibited without due diligence?
By what wickedness, by what sort of crime have they been
polluted? You will answer on behalf of yourself; and of your colleagues, and
of the college of pontiffs, that none of these things have been treated
contemptuously through the carelessness of anyone, or polluted by any
wickedness, but that all the solemnities and practices of the games have
been attended to with a proper observance of all necessary things, and with
the strictest performance of all the usual ceremonies.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.