A remarkable instance of ignorance and superstition was afforded by the conduct of the Romans, when the city, being in about its four hundred and sixtieth year, was visited by a pestilence. Recourse was had to the Sibylline books for a prescription to get rid of the plague, when the augurs, like a doctor who, unable to cure his patient, orders him abroad, declared that the only thing to be done was to go to Epidaurus, a town in Greece, and bring to Rome the god Æsculapius. Ten ambassadors were despatched on the mission; but after looking in all directions for Æsculapius, they happened to stumble over a stone, in which they were told he was resident. Having been induced to purchase the article at a high price, they were taking it on board their ship, when they fell in with the proprietor of a small menagerie, who, directing their attention to a tame snake in the collection, offered it to them a bargain as the identical Æsculapius they were looking for. The Roman envoys, thinking there might, after all, be nothing in the stone, concluded there might be something in the snake, which began to twine itself affectionately about them; and having been bought and paid for, sagaciously glided through the town, made for the Roman vessel, and coiled himself up like a coil of rope in the cabin of the ambassadors.
On their way home, a storm caused them to put in at Antium, when the snake, who might have been a very good snake, but was a very bad sailor, went ashore, took a turn or two round a palm-tree, hung out there for three days, and then went back to the vessel. On the arrival of the ambassadors at Rome, they began describing at some length the result of their journey, when the snake gave them the slip, and while their tongues were running on, managed to run off to the island in the Tiber. Having looked in vain for the snake in the grass, they built a temple on the spot, in honour of Æsculapius, and the serpent glided on--no one knows where--to the end of his existence.
The wars which had been so exhausting to the almost inexhaustible Sabines, had been scarcely less ruinous to the Romans, and indeed the opening up of so many bones of contention had, to use the words of a recent writer, consumed "the very marrow of the nation."[34] In spite of all their conquests, the people were miserably poor; for destruction, instead of production, had been their occupation during a series of years; and though their wants had been supplied for a time by plunder, scarcity was sure to ensue at last, from a stoppage of the very source of all wealth, the peaceful exercise of industry. The tide of adversity which, in the first instance, overwhelms only the lower ranks, rises, with unerring certainty, until even the highest are absorbed, and few are able, in the end, to keep their heads above water. When circumstances appear hopeless, remedies become desperate, rash legislation ensues, and thus, during the distresses of Rome, the plebs having seceded, a proposal was adopted, in the shape of the Hortensian Law, to allow them to do just as they liked, in order to tempt them back again.