9.
The destructive power of this evil spread from Etruria to Rome like the contagion of a pestilence. At first the size of the City, with abundant room and tolerance for such evils, concealed it: at length information came to the consul Postumius in about this manner.
[2]
Publius Aebutius, whose father had performed his military service with a horse supplied by the state,1 was left a ward, and later, on the death of his guardians, was brought under the tutelage of his mother Duronia and his stepfather Titus Sempronius Rutilus.
[3]
His mother was devoted to her husband, and his stepfather, who had so administered his guardianship that he could not render an accounting,2 desired that the ward should either be done away with or be made dependent upon them by some tie. The one method of corrupting him was through the Bacchanalia. The mother addressed the young man: while he was sick, she said, she had vowed for him that as soon as he had recovered she would initiate him into the Bacchic rites; being compelled, by the kindness of the gods, to pay her vow,3 she wished to fulfil it.
[4]
For ten days, she continued, he must practise continence: on the tenth day she would conduct him to the banquet and then, after ritual purification,4 to the shrine.
[5]
There was a [p. 245]wellknown courtesan, a freedwoman named Hispala5 Faecenia, not worthy6 of the occupation to which, while still a mere slave, she had accustomed herself, and even after she had been manumitted she maintained herself in the same way.
[6]
Between her and Aebutius, since they were neighbours, an intimacy developed, not at all damaging either to the young man's fortune or to his reputation; for he had been loved and sought out without any effort on his part, and, since his own relatives made provision for all his needs on a very small scale, he was maintained by the generosity of the courtesan.
[7]
More than that, she had gone so far, under the influence of their intimacy, that, after the death of her patron, since she was under the legal control of no one, having petitioned the tribunes and the praetor for a guardian, when she made her will she had instituted Aebutius as her sole heir.7
1 He was an eques equo publico, receiving an annual allowance for the purchase and upkeep of his mounts.
2 A tutor rendered to the court which appointed him an account of his administration of the property, at least when the ward came of age.
3 A vow, to a Roman, created a quasi-contractual obligation, which was as effective as the sentence of a court: hence damnatam voti.
4 Paulus Diaconus (p. 248) defines pure lautum as aqua pura lautum.
5 B.C. 186
6 i.e., worthy of something better.
7 A freedwoman was subject to the manus of her patron, who was often her former owner. Faecenia had no patron and no relative who would naturally assume the responsibilities of guardianship, and could therefore petition the praetor and the tribunes jointly for the appointment of a tutor, whose approval was necessary to the performance of any legal act, such as making a will.
Livy. Books XXXVIII-XXXIX with an English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1936: published without copyright notice.
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