rain to the population of
the capital at very low prices. "It was no wonder," Cato considered,
"that the burgesses no longer listened to good advice--the belly
forsooth had no ears."

Festivals

Popular amusements increased to an alarming extent. For five hundred
years the community had been content with one festival in the year,
and with one circus. The first Roman demagogue by profession, Gaius
Flaminius, added a second festival and a second circus (534);(45) and
by these institutions--the tendency of which is sufficiently indicated
by the very name of the new festival, "the plebeian games"--he
probably purchased the permission to give battle at the Trasimene
lake. When the path was once opened, the evil made rapid progress.
The festival in honour of Ceres, the goddess who protected the
plebeian order,(46) must have been but little, if at all, later than
the plebeian games. On the suggestion of the Sibylline and Marcian
prophecies, moreover, a fourth festival was added in 542 in honour of
Apollo, and a fifth in 550 in honour of the "Great Mother" recently
transplanted from Phrygia to Rome. These were the severe years of
the Hannibalic war--on the first celebration of the games of Apollo
the burgesses were summoned from the circus itself to arms; the
superstitious fear peculiar to Italy was feverishly excited, and
persons were not wanting who took advantage of the opportunity to
circulate Sibylline and prophetic oracles and to recommend themselves
to the multitude through their contents and advocacy: we can scarcely
blame the government, which was obliged to call for so enormous
sacrifices from the burgesses, for yielding in such matters. But what
was once conceded had to be continued; indeed, even in more peaceful
times (581) there was added another festival, although of minor
importance--the games in honour of Flora. The cost of these new
festal amusements was defrayed by the magistrates entrusted with the
providing of the respective festivals from their own means: thus the
curule aediles had, over and above the old national festival, those
of the Mother of the Gods and of Flora; the plebeian aediles had the
plebeian festival and that of Ceres, and the urban praetor the
Apollinarian games. Those who sanctioned the new festivals perhaps
excused themselves in their own eyes by the reflection that they were
not at any rate a burden on the public purse; but it would have been
in reality far less injurious to