# CHAPTER 13 — How the Romans Made Use of Religion to Reorganize Their City, to Carry Out Their Enterprises, and to Quell Disturbances

I do not think it beside the point to set forth some examples in which the Romans employed religion to reorganize their city and to carry out their enterprises, and although there are many of them in Livy, I nevertheless wish to be satisfied with these. After the Roman people had created tribunes with consular powers, who, with one exception, were all plebeians, and after plague and famine had occurred that year and certain portentous signs had appeared, the nobles took the occasion of the new creation of the tribunes to declare that the gods were angry because Rome had misused the majesty of her empire and that there was no other remedy to placate the gods than to return the election of the tribunes to its former system; the result was that the plebeians, terrified by this use of religion, created tribunes who were all nobles. It can also be seen how, in the conquest of the city of Veii, the leaders of the armies employed religion to keep their armies resolute in their undertaking: since Lake Albanus had miraculously increased in size that year, and the Roman soldiers were weary of the long siege and wanted to return to Rome, the Romans discovered that Apollo * and certain other soothsayers were saying that the city of Veii would be defeated during the year in which Lake Albanus overflowed its banks; this made the soldiers endure the hardships of the siege, in their hope of taking the city by storm, and they remained content to continue the campaign until Camillus was made dictator and captured the city after the ten years during which it had been under siege. Thus, the careful use of religion helped both in the capture of that city and in the return of the tribunate to the nobility, without which it would have been difficult to carry out either enterprise.

I do not want to fail to add another example on this topic. Many disturbances arose in Rome because of Terentillus the tribune, * who wished to propose a certain law for reasons that will be stated below in the proper place, and among the first remedies that the nobility employed in this case was religion, which they made use of in two ways. First, they had the Sibylline Books consulted and the response given that, because of sedition, the city was threatened with the loss of her liberty that year; although the tribunes exposed this scheme, it nevertheless inspired so much terror in the hearts of the plebeians that their desire to follow the tribunes cooled off. The other way was this: a certain Appius Herdonius, * with a crowd of exiles and slaves numbering 4,000 men, occupied the Capitol by night, so that everyone would fear that had the Aequi and the Volscians, perpetual enemies of Rome, come to the city, they would have taken it. Since the tribunes did not, on this account, abandon their persistence in proposing the law of Terentillus, declaring that the possibility of attack was fabricated, not real, a certain Publius Ruberius, * a dignified citizen of authority, came out of the senate with words that were partly friendly and partly menacing, demonstrating to the plebeians the dangers to the city and the untimeliness of their demand; in this way, he constrained the plebeians to swear not to depart from the wishes of the consul, with the result that the compliant plebeians retook the Capitoline Hill by force. But since Publius Valerius the consul was killed in this assault, Titus Quinctius was immediately reelected consul. * In order to avoid allowing the plebeians to rest or to have time to think about the law of Terentillus, he ordered them to leave Rome to move against the Volscians, declaring that they were obliged to follow him because of the oath they had taken not to abandon the consul: the tribunes opposed this order, saying that the oath had been sworn to the dead consul and not to him. Nevertheless, Livy demonstrates how through fear of their religion the plebeians preferred to obey the consul rather than to believe the tribunes, writing the following words in favour of the ancient religion: ‘there was as yet no sign of our modern scepticism which interprets solemn compacts, such as those embodied in an oath or a law, to suit its own convenience’. * Because of this, the tribunes, fearing they would lose all their prestige, reached an agreement with the consul that they would yield to him, and that for a year they would not discuss the law of Terentillus, while the consuls could not, for a year, lead the plebeians outside the city walls to war. Thus, religion enabled the senate to overcome the difficulties they could never have overcome without it.