Citation with stable link: Philip A. Harland, 'Romans and Greeks: Livy on human sacrifice and other crimes by Bacchic devotees in Italy (late first century BCE),' Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, last modified September 23, 2026, https://philipharland.com/Blog/?p=23476.
Ancient author: Livy (ca. 9 BCE), Roman History 38.16-27 (link; link to Latin); ILLRP 511 = CIL I² 581 (October 186 BCE).
Comments: Livy’s story about worshippers of Dionysos Bacchos set around 186 BCE (but written around 9 BCE) can be viewed, in large part, as a glimpse into Roman elite assumptions about foreign threats from the East combined with internal conspiracy. But it also comes across as somewhat of a guidebook on how to deploy ethnographic commonplaces in order to criminalize particular segments of one’s own society, segments pictured as led astray from Roman ancestral customs. For decades, scholars have recognized the creative and dramatic efforts of Livy: in other words, how he deploys standard dramatic and literary motifs in order to create an exciting / terrifying story of sex and murder, with the moral of the story being stick to traditional Roman customs (see Scafuro 1989 and Walsh 1996 as a starting point).
We do have epigraphic evidence that the Roman senate did attempt to take some actions against Bacchic worship around this time, but without any inkling as to what may have caused these moves beyond that the Roman elites were fond of extending their influence in nearby parts of Italy (where they had no legal basis to do so) by using the issue of worship of a foreign deity (see the inscriptions beneath Livy’s account). But this is nothing approaching Livy’s conspiratorial drama written almost two hundred years later. The result is an over the top image of an association devoted almost solely to every kind of crime imaginable, with sexual violations and sacrificial slaughter of human victims (immolare is the Latin term) being predominant themes. Also particularly scary for Livy is that this infiltration of foreign ways involved members of Roman elite families, both women and men together, not just Greek immigrants. There is no space to outline the extensive scholarly discussions of this passage, except to say that almost never have scholars fully engaged with this material against the backdrop of ethnographic discourses and never with respect to ancient techniques of criminalization (since often “politics” – especially trying to say something about what actually happened in 186 BCE – and “religion” have been the guiding scholarly categories rather than issues of ethnicity).
Works consulted: A. Scafuro, “Livy’s Comic Narrative of the Bacchanalia,” Helios 16 (1989), 119-137; P. G. Walsh, “Making a Drama Out of a Crisis: Livy on the Bacchanalia,” G&R 43 (1996): 188–203 (link).
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Livy
[Context of the criminal conspiracy, including supposed moral decline and Asian influence on luxury items at Rome]
(39.6) The time for the election of the consuls was now at hand. Since M. Aemilius, who had the task of conducting the elections, was unable to fulfill this role, C. Flaminius went to Rome for this purpose. The consuls elected were Spurius Postumius Albinus and Q. Marcius Philippus. The new praetors were T. Maenius, P. Cornelius Sulla, C. Calpurnius Piso, M. Licinius Lucullus, C. Aurelius Scaurus and L. Quinctius Crispinus.
At the end of the year, after the new magistrates had been appointed, Gnaeus Manlius Vulso celebrated his triumph over the Gauls [Galatians] who are in Asia [ca. 189 BCE]. The reason why he deferred his triumph to such a late time was his anxiety to avoid a prosecution under the Petillian law while Q. Terentius Culleo was praetor, and the possibility of being caught by the flames of the verdict which condemned Scipio. He thought the judges would be even more hostile to him than they had been to Scipio due to reports which had reached Rome of his allowing the soldiers every kind of licence and completely destroying the discipline which his predecessor Scipio had maintained. Nor were the stories of what had gone on in his province – out of most people’s sight – the only things that discredited him.
Still worse things were witnessed every day among his soldiers every day, because it was by way of the army serving in Asia that the beginnings of foreign luxury were introduced into the city. These men brought into Rome, for the first time: bronze couches, costly coverings, tapestry, other fabrics, and what was at that time considered gorgeous furniture, including pedestal tables and sideboards. Banquets were made more attractive by the presence of girls who played on the harp, sang and danced, and by other forms of amusement. The banquets themselves began to be prepared with greater care and expense. The cook whom the ancients regarded and treated as the lowest of slaves was rising in value, and what had been a servile position came to be considered as a fine art. Still what they witnessed in those days was barely the seed of the luxury that was coming. . . [omitted section].
[Bacchanalia conspiracy]
(39.8) During the following year [186 BCE], the consuls Spurius Postumius Albinus and Quintus Marcius Philippus had their attention diverted from the army, the wars, and the administration of provinces by the necessity of putting down an internal conspiracy (coniuratio). The provinces were allotted to the praetors as follows: jurisdiction over the citizens to T. Maenius, jurisdiction over the foreigners to M. Licinius Lucullus, Sardinia to C. Aurelius Scaurus, Sicily to P. Cornelius Sulla, Closer Spain to L. Q. Crispinus, and Further Spain to C. Calpurnius Piso. Both the consuls were given the role of investigating secret conspiracies.
[Greek immigrant as origin of the criminal conspiracy]
At first, a low-born Greek went into Etruria. However, he did not bring with him any of the numerous skills which that most accomplished of all peoples has introduced among us for the cultivation of mind and body. He was a sacrificial priest and a prophet, but not one of those who fill men’s minds with error by professing to teach their superstitions openly for money. Rather, he was an overseer of secret and nocturnal sacred rites [dedicated to the god Dionysos Bacchos, we later learn]. At first these rites were divulged to only a few. Then they began to spread among both men and women, and the attractions of wine and feasting increased the number of his followers.
[Enumeration of the supposed crimes in Etruria]
When they were heated with wine and the nightly mixing of men and women, younger ones with older ones, had extinguished all sense of modesty, sexual pleasures of every kind began to take place. Each had pleasures at hand to satisfy the lust he was most prone to. Nor was the type of offence (noxa) confined to the promiscuous sex of freeborn women with men. False witnesses, forged seals and testaments, and false information all proceeded from the same source, as well as poisonings (venena) and internal slaughters (caedes) where the bodies could not even be found for burial. Many crimes were committed by treachery, most by violence. This remained secret because the cries of those who were being violated or murdered could not be heard due to the noise of drums and cymbals.
[Spread to Rome and the story of the exposure of the conspiracy]
(39.9) The pollution of this evil (malus) spread from Etruria to Rome like a contagious disease. At first, the size and extent of the city allowing more scope and impunity for such evils, served to conceal them, but in the long run information reached the consul, mainly through the following channel. Publius Aebutius, whose father had served as a horseman in the army and passed away, had been left under guardians. On their death he had been brought up under the care of his mother Duronia and his stepfather Titus Sempronius Rutilus. The mother was completely in her husband’s control. Since the stepfather performed his guardianship in a way that he could not give a proper account for it, he was anxious that his ward should either be put out of the way or made dependent on them through some tie.
[Tale of Aebutius and Hispala Faecenia]
One way of corrupting the youth’s morals was through the Bacchic rites (Bacchanalia). The mother told the youth that she had made a vow on his behalf during an illness, namely, that as soon as he recovered she would initiate him into the Bacchic mysteries. In that way, she would through the kindness of the gods discharge the vow by which she was bound. He would need to preserve his chastity for ten days. Then after supper on the tenth day she would take him to a place set apart for the rite of initiation.
There was a freedwoman named Hispala Faecenia who, though she was a prostitute, was worthy of better things than the occupation to which she had been accustomed from her girlhood and by which she supported herself even after she had been manumitted. As their houses were near one another, an intimacy had sprung up between her and Aebutius. This was in no way injurious to either his reputation or his resources. She sought his company and his love unsolicited, and as his parents kept him close in every way, he was maintained by the girl’s generosity. Her passion for him had gone so far that, after her guardian had died and she was no longer a ward, she begged the tribunes and the praetor to appoint a guardian for her. Then she could make a will and she made Aebutius her sole heir.
(39.10) With these proofs of her love they had no secrets from each other, and the youth told her jokingly not to be surprised if he away from her for several nights. He had a duty (religio) to perform, namely the discharge of a vow made while he was sick. For this reason, he intended to be initiated into the Bacchic [or Dionysiac] rites. She was terribly upset when she hear this and exclaimed, “Gods forbid! It would be better for us both to die than for you to do this!” Then she invoked deadly curses on the heads of those who had advised him to take this course. The youth, astonished at her outburst and excitement, ordered her spare her curses. It was his mother who had given him this command with the consent of his stepfather. Hispala replied: “Perhaps it is not right to accuse your mother of this, then, but your stepfather is by this act rushing to destroy your modesty, your reputation, your hopes, and your life.” Even more amazed, Aebutius asked her what she meant.
[Secrets regarding the Bacchic group revealed]
She prayed to the gods and goddesses to forgive her if, constrained by her affection, she revealed what she should be silent about. Then she explained that, while she was a slave, she had accompanied her mistress into that place of initiation, but had never gone near it since she was free. She knew it to be a sink of every form of corruption, and it was a matter of common knowledge that no one over twenty years old had been initiated for the last two years. As each person was brought in, he was handed over to the priests like a victim and taken into a place which resounded with yells, with singing, and with the jangling of cymbals and drums, so that no cry from those who were suffering violation could be heard. She then begged and implored him to get out of the situation in whatever way he could, and to not rush blindly into a place where he would first have to endure, and then commit, every bizarre thing. Until he had given his word to keep clear of these rites she would not let him go.
(39.11) After Aebutius reached home, his mother brought up the subject of the initiation and told him what he had to do in connection with it on that day and in the following days. He informed her that he would do nothing of the kind. He had no intention of being initiated. His stepfather was present. His mother immediately exclaimed, “He cannot pass ten nights away from Hispala’s embraces! He is so intoxicated with the enchantments and poisonings of that viper that he has no respect for his parent, his stepfather, or the gods!” Amid these scoldings of his mother on the one side and his stepfather on the other, he was finally driven out of the house with the assistance of four slaves.
[Aunt Aebutia and the consul Postumius]
The youth went to his aunt Aebutia and explained why he had been expelled from his home. At his aunt’s suggestion, he shared the matter privately before the consul Postumius the following day. The consul told him to come again in three days’ time. In the meantime, Postumius inquired of Sulpicia, his mother-in-law, a grave and judicious woman, whether she knew an old woman called Aebutia living in the Aventine neighbourhood. Sulpicia replied that she knew Aebutia to be a woman of respectable and strictly moral character. At this point, the consul said that it was important that he should have an interview with her, and Sulpicia must send for Aebutia to see Sulpicia. Aebutia came to visit Sulpicia, and the consul, entering as though by chance, changed the topic of conversation to to her brother’s son [Aebutius]. The woman burst into tears and began to lament the youth’s misfortunes, robbed as he had been of his fortune by those who should have been the very last to do such a thing. She said that Aebutius was at her house at the moment: “He had been driven away by his mother because the honest and respectable youth refused – may the gods forgive me – to be initiated into what were commonly believed to be impure and obscene sacred rites.”
[Hispala interviewed by the consul Postumius]
(39.12) The consul considered that he had ascertained all that was necessary about Aebutius, and that the evidence was trustworthy. So Postumius dismissed Aebutia and asked his mother-in-law Sulpicia to send for Hispala, a freedwoman, who was well known round the Aventine, because there were some questions he wanted to ask her. Hispala was alarmed at the message and at being called into the presence of a woman of such high rank and character without knowing the reason. When she saw the lictors and the consul’s attendants in the vestibule, she nearly fainted. She was led into an inner room where the consul and his mother-in-law were present. The consul told her that there was nothing to be afraid of if she would decide to speak the truth. He told her that she could trust the pledged word of such a woman as Sulpicia and his own promise of safety, but she must give him a description of what usually went on at the nocturnal Bacchic rites in the grove of Simila. On hearing this, the woman was seized with such a fright and a trembling in all her limbs that she could not open her lips. Finally she recovered her nerves and said that when she was just a girl she had been initiated, together with her mistress. However, since she had been manumitted some years ago, she knew nothing about what went on there. The consul commended her for having confessed that she had been initiated and begged her to be equally truthful in the rest of her story. She avowed that she knew nothing further, on which the consul warned her that she would not receive the same consideration and forgiveness if she were confuted by some other person [i.e. Aebutius] rather than making a voluntary confession. The person who had heard these things from her had disclosed everything to Postumius.
(39.13) The woman being convinced, and quite rightly, that Aebutius was the informer, flung herself at Sulpicia’s feet and implored her not to let a conversation between a freedwoman and her lover be treated so seriously as to amount to treason. What Hispala had told him was for the purpose of frightening, not because she really knew anything. Postumius was very angry, and told her that she must be imagining that she was joking with her lover, and not speaking in the house of a serious and revered lady and in the presence of the consul. Sulpicia raised the terrified woman from the floor, spoke soothingly to her and tried to quiet her. Eventually Hispala became calm. She bitterly reproached Aebutius for the return he had made after all she had done for him. She then declared that while she stood in great fear of the gods, whose secret rites she was revealing, she stood in much greater fear of men who would tear her to pieces if she turned into an informer. So she begged Sulpicia and the consul to remove her to some place outside the borders of Italy where she could pass the rest of her life in safety. The consul ordered her not to be apprehensive; he would see to it that she found a safe home in Rome.
[Details of secret rites and crimes revealed again by Hispala]
Then Hispala gave an account of the origin of these rites. At first they were confined to women. No man was admitted. They also had three prearranged days in the year on which persons were initiated during the daytime, and matrons were chosen to act as priestesses. When Paculla Annia, a Campanian woman, was priestess, she completely changed this as though by divine warning, for she was the first to admit men and she initiated her own sons, Minius Cerinnius and Herennius Cerinnius. At the same time she made the rite a night-time one, and instead of three days in the year celebrated it five times a month. Once the mysteries had assumed this promiscuous character, and men were mixed with women with all the freedom of darkness, there was no outrageous action (facinus) or crime (flagitium) left undone. There were more sexual violations between men than their were with women. Whoever would not submit to defilement or hesitated from violating others was sacrificed (immolare) as a victim. To regard nothing as impious was the sum total of their form of worship (religio). The men, as though seized with madness and with frenzied distortions of their bodies, shrieked out prophecies. The matrons, dressed as Bacchic devotees and with messed up hair, rushed down to the Tiber river with burning torches, plunged them into the water. They drew the torches out again, the flame undiminished, as they were made of sulphur mixed with lime. Men were fastened to a torture machine and hurried off to hidden caves, and they were said to have been taken away by the gods. These were the men who refused to join their conspiracy or who refused to participate in their crimes or submit to pollution. They formed a huge crowd, almost equal to the population of Rome. Among them were members of noble families, both men and women. It had been made a rule for the last two years that no one more than twenty years old should be initiated. They captured those to be deceived and polluted.
[Consul Postumius’ and the Roman Senate’s response to the report]
(39.14) When Hispala had finished giving her evidence, she fell on her knees and again begged the consul to send her abroad. Postumius asked his mother-in-law to set apart some portion of her house where she could stay. An upper room was assigned to her which was approached by a flight of steps from the street. The steps were blocked up and an entrance made from inside the house. All Faecenia Hispala’s possessions were quickly transferred and her household slaves were brought in. Aebutius was ordered to stay with a client of the consul’s.
As both his informants were now in his hands, Postumius reported the affair to the senate. Everything was explained as it occurred, the information which he had first received and then the information he had obtained in answer to his questions. The Fathers [senators] were greatly alarmed both for the public safety, in the event that these secret conspiracies and nocturnal gatherings might bring about some hidden treachery or danger; and privately, in the event that their own relations and friends might be involved.
They passed a vote of thanks to the consul for having conducted his investigations so carefully and without creating any public disturbance. Then, arming the consuls with extraordinary powers, they placed in their hands the inquiry into the proceedings at the Bacchic activities (Bacchanalia) and the unauthorized nocturnal rites. They were to take care that Aebutius and Hispala Faecenia suffered no injury for the information they had given. The consuls were to offer rewards to induce other informers to come forward. Those who presided over these mysteries were to be sought out not only in Rome, but everywhere where people were in the habit of assembling, so that they might be delivered up to the consuls.
Edicts were published in Rome and throughout Italy forbidding any who had been initiated into the Bacchic rites from meeting together to worship or assemble for similar rites. Above all, strict inquiry was to be made in the case of those who attended gatherings where a sexual violation (stuprum) or crime (flagitium) had occurred.
Those were the measures which the senate decreed. The consuls sent orders to the curule aediles to search out all the priests of those rites and, when they were arrested, to keep them in such custody as they thought best until their trial. The plebeian aediles were to see that no rites were performed in the day time. The police commissioners were instructed to post watches throughout the city and take care that no night-time gatherings took place. As a precaution against fires, five men were appointed to assist the commissioners and take charge of the buildings assigned to them on this side of the Tiber.
[Consul Postumius’ supposed speech, reiterating Livy’s overall points about the preservation of Roman ancestral customs over against foreign influences]
(39.15) When the various officials had been assigned their duties, the consuls convened the assembly and mounted the Rostra. After the usual prayers with which proceedings are opened before the magistrates address the people, the consul began as follows:
“In no meeting of the assembly has this solemn appeal to the gods been so appropriate and, I would add, so necessary. For it reminds you that it is these gods whom your ancestors ordained that we should worship, reverence, and pray to. We should not do so for those gods who have driven the minds of people enslaved by foul and foreign forms of worship (religiones) – as though by goading furies – into every type of wicked act (scelus) and every kind of sexual perversion (libido).”
“I am unsure how far I should keep silence, and how far I should go in what I have to say. I am afraid that, if you remain in ignorance of anything, I may leave an opening for neglect. While if I disclose everything, I may create too much alarm. Whatever I say, you may be certain that it does not reach the enormity and horror of the situation. We will make it our aim to say enough that you can protect yourself. That Bacchic rites have for some time been going on throughout Italy and are now practiced in many parts of the city you have, I am sure, learned not only by rumour, but also by the nightly noises and yells which resound all over the city. However, I do not think you know what it all means. Some of you believe that it is a particular form of worshipping (cultus) of the gods. Others think that it is some permissible kind of game or form of enjoyment. Few people understand its true nature. As to their numbers, you would inevitably be extremely alarmed if I were to say that there are many thousands of them, unless I went on to explain who and what sort of people they are.”
“In the first place, then, women form the vast majority, and this was the source of all the evil (malus). Then there are the men, the very counterparts of women, committing and submitting to the foulest uncleanness, frantic and frenzied, driven out of their senses by sleepless nights, by wine, by nocturnal shouting and loud noise. The conspiracy does not so far possess any strength, but its numbers are rapidly increasing daily, and its strength is growing. Your ancestors would not even have your assembly meet in an irregular and haphazard way, but only when the standard was hoisted on the citadel and the centuries in their array marched out, or when the tribunes had given notice of a meeting of the common people (plebs), or the assembly had been duly convened by one of the magistrates. Whenever the people met together there was bound to be a lawful authority to preside over it.”
“Do you have any idea what these nocturnal gatherings, these promiscuous minglings of men and women, are? If you knew at what age males are initiated, you would feel not only compassion for them, but shame as well. Do you consider, citizens, that young men who have been initiated into this oath (sacramentum) are to be made into soldiers? That after the training they have received in that shrine of obscenity they are to be entrusted with weapons? Should these men, reeking with their own impurity and the impurity of those around them, wield their swords in defence of the chastity of your wives and children?”
[Crimes enumerated again]
(39.16) “It would be less serious if they had only become effeminate through their debauchery – the disgrace would fall mainly upon themselves – and had kept their minds from outrageous actions (facinora) and deceptions (fraudes). Never has there been such a gigantic evil (malus) in the community, or one which has affected greater numbers of people or caused more numerous outcomes. Whatever instances of sexual perversion (libido), deception (fraus), or crime (scelus) have occurred during these last years, have originated, you may be perfectly certain, in that single shrine. They have not yet disclosed all the criminal aims of their conspiracy. So far, their impious conspiracy (coniuratio) confines itself to private injuries (noxii); it does not yet have enough strength to destroy the community (re publicam). But the evil is creeping stealthily on and growing daily. It is already too great to limit its action to individual citizens; it looks to be supreme in the community. Unless, citizens, you take precautions, this assembly (contio) legally convened by a consul in the daylight will be confronted by another assembly gathered together in the darkness of the night. Now they, disunited, fear you, a united assembly, but when you are dispersed to your homes and your farms they will hold their assembly and plot their own safety and your ruin. It will then be your turn, scattered as you will be, to fear them in their united strength.”
“Therefore, everyone of you should pray that your friends have preserved their good sense. If unbridled and maddening sexual perversion has swept any one away into that whirlpool, you must judge him as belonging not to you but to those whom he has joined as fellow-conspirators in every kind of wickedness. I am unsure whether even some of you may have been misled. For there is nothing which wears a more deceptive appearance than a distorted form of worship (religio). Where wicked actions (scelera) are sheltered under the name of the divine power of the gods, there is fear that, in the event of punishing the hypocrisy of men, we are doing violence to something holy which is inseparable from it. From these scrupulous concerns about proper obligations to the gods (religiones), you are delivered by innumerable decisions of the high priest, resolutions of the senate, and responses of the diviners (haruspices). How often in the times of your fathers and grandfathers has the task been assigned to the magistrates of forbidding all foreign rites (externa sacra), prohibiting sacrificing priests and prophets from entering either the forum, the circus, or the city, seeking out and burning all books of fake prophecies, and abolishing every sacrificial rite except what was in keeping with with Roman custom (mos)! Those men were masters of all human and divine love and they believed that nothing tended to destroy worship (religio) as much as the performance of sacrificial rites in a foreign way rather than in an ancestral way. I thought I should to tell you this beforehand, so that none of you may be distressed by an inappropriate fear of the gods (superstitio) when you see us demolishing the Bacchic rites and dispersing their impious meetings.”
“Everything we do will be done with the sanction of the gods and in obedience to their will. The gods have dragged the Bacchic worshippers out of their dark hiding-places into the light of day in order to show the gods displeasure at the insult offered to the gods’ majesty by these wicked deeds and sexual perversions. The gods want them to be exposed not to enjoy impunity, but to be punished and crushed.”
“The senate has entrusted my colleague and myself with extraordinary powers for conducting an inquiry into this matter. We shall make an energetic use of them, and we have charged the subordinate magistrates with the care of the night-watches throughout the city. It is only right that you should show equal energy in doing your duty in whatever position you may be placed and whatever orders you receive, and also in making it your business to see that no danger or disturbance arises through the secret plots of the culprits (noxii).”
[Procedures implemented against the worshippers of Bacchos]
(39.17) They then ordered the resolutions of the senate to be read and they offered a reward for any one who would bring a guilty person before the consuls, or give in his name if he were not forthcoming. In the case of any one who had been denounced and then tried to escape, they would fix a day for him to answer the charge and, if he failed to appear, he would be condemned in his absence. For any one who was abroad at the time they would extend the date in the event that he wanted to make his defence. They then published an edict forbidding any one to sell or buy anything for the purpose of escaping, or to receive, harbour, or in any way assist those who tried to escape.
After the assembly had broken up, the entire city was thoroughly alarmed. Nor was the alarm confined within the walls of the city or the boundaries of Rome. There was uneasiness and consternation throughout the whole of Italy when letters began to arrive announcing the resolutions of the senate, the proceedings in the assembly, and the edict of the consuls. During the night following the disclosure of the affair in the assembly, guards were posted at all the gates. Many people who tried to escape were arrested by the police commissioners and brought back. Many names were handed in, and some of these, both men and women, committed suicide. It was asserted that more than seven thousand of both sexes were implicated in the conspiracy. The ringleaders were, it appears, the two members of the Atinius family, Marcus and Gaeus, both members of the Roman common people (plebs), as well as L. Opiternius of Falerium and Minius Cerrinius of Campania. They were the source of all the outrageous actions (facinora) and crimes (flagitia). They were the high priests and founders. Care was taken that they should be arrested as soon as possible, and when brought before the consuls they immediately made a complete confession.
(39.18) So great, however, was the number of those who fled from the city that law-suits and rights of property were in numerous cases lost by default. The praetors were compelled through the intervention of the senate to adjourn their courts for a month in order to allow the consuls to complete their investigations. Owing to the fact that those whose names were on the list did not answer to the summons, and were not to be found in Rome, the consuls had to visit the towns in the countryside and conduct their inquiries and try the cases there.
[Forms of punishment]
Those who had merely gone through the initiation were detained in prison. These were the ones who had repeated after the priest the prescribed form of imprecation which pledged them to every form of outrageous action and sexual perversion pertaining to the impious conspiracy, but had not been either active or passive participants in any of the proceedings to which their oath bound them. Those who had polluted themselves by sexual violations and slaughter and those who had stained themselves by giving false evidence, forging seals and wills and by other fraudulent practices were sentenced to death. The number of those executed exceeded the number of those sentenced to imprisonment. There was an enormous number of men as well as women in both categories. The women who had been found guilty were handed over to their relatives or guardians to be dealt with privately. If there was no one capable of inflicting punishment, they were executed publicly.
[Actions against Bacchic shrines, control of the rites, and exceptions]
The next task awaiting the consuls was the destruction of all the Bacchic shrines, beginning with Rome, and then throughout the length and breadth of Italy. The only exceptions were places where there was an ancient altar or a sacred image. The senate decreed that for the future there should be no Bacchic rites in Rome or in Italy. If any one considered that this form of worship was a necessary obligation (religio) and that he could not dispense with it without incurring the guilt of impiety, he was to make a declaration before the city praetor and the praetor was to consult the senate. If the senate gave permission – with not less than one hundred senators present – he might observe those rites on condition that not more than five persons took part, that they had no common fund, and that there was no priest or conductor of the ceremonies.
(39.19) Another matter connected with this was brought forward by the consul Quintus Marcius and made the subject of a decree, namely, the cases of those whom the consuls had employed as informers. The question was left for the senate to deal with as soon as Spurius Postumius had closed his inquiry and returned to Rome. The senate decided that Minius Cerrinius, the Campanian, should be sent in chains to Ardea, and that the magistrates there should be warned to keep him in custody under close observation to prevent not only his escape but any chance of his committing suicide.
[Rewards for Aebutius and Hispala for exposing the conspiracy]
After some time Spurius Postumius returned to Rome. He brought up the question of the rewards to be given to P. Aebutius and Hispala Faecenia, as it was owing to them that the Bacchanalia had been detected. The senate decided that the city praetor should give each of them 100,000 copper coins (asses) out of the treasury, and that the consul should arrange with the tribunes to propose to the common people (plebs) on the first opportunity that P. Aebutius should be exempted from military conscription, and not compelled to serve in either the infantry or the cavalry, unless he wanted to.
Hispala Faecenia was granted the right of disposing of her property in any way she chose, of marrying out of her descent group, and selecting her own guardian, just as though a husband had left her this power in his will. She was also free to marry a free-born citizen, and whoever married her would not suffer in reputation or position. Moreover, the consuls and praetors then in office, and those who would succeed them, were to make it their care that no harm should happen to the woman but that she should live a safe life. The senate considered these proposals equitable and thought it right that they should be adopted. They were submitted to the common people (plebs) and the resolution of the senate was confirmed. The consuls were to secure the impunity of the other informers and decide upon their rewards.
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Senatorial decree and accompanying instructions inscribed on a bronze tablet from Tiriolo (186 BCE)
[Senatorial decree]
No one of them shall attempt to have a place devoted to the worship of Bacchus. If there are any who say that they have a need for such a place, they shall appear in Rome before the urban praetor. And when the pleas of these men have been heard, our Senate shall make a decision regarding these matters, provided that not less than 100 senators are present when the matter is discussed. No Roman citizen or man of Latin rights or anyone of the allies shall associate with the Bacchic devotees (Bacchae), unless they have appeared before the urban praetor and the praetor has given permission, in accordance with the opinion of the Senate, delivered while not less than 100 senators were present when the matter was discussed.
No man shall be priest of, nor shall any man or woman be master of, such an organization. Nor shall anyone of them attempt to have a common fund. Nor shall anyone attempt to appoint any man or woman to be master of such an organization or to act as master. Nor from this point onward shall anyone attempt to take common oath with them, shall attempt to make common vows, shall attempt make stipulations with them, nor shall anyone attempt to give them surety or shall take surety from them. No one shall attempt to perform their rites in secret. Nor shall anyone attempt to perform their rites in public, in private, or outside the city, unless he has appeared before the urban praetor and the praetor has given permission, in accordance with the opinion of the Senate, delivered while not less than 100 senators were present when the matter was discussed.
No one in a company of more than five persons altogether, men and women, shall perform such rites. Nor in that company shall more than two men or three women be present, unless it is in accordance with the opinion of the urban praetor and the Senate, as has been written above.
[Instructions for publication]
You shall publish these decrees in public assembly for not less than three market days, so that you may know the opinion of the Senate. For the opinion of the senators is as follows: “If there are any persons who act contrary to what has been written above, it is our opinion that a proceeding for a capital offense must be made against them.” You shall also inscribe this on a bronze tablet, for this is what the Senate voted was proper. You shall order it to be posted where it can be read most easily. Further, as has been written above, you shall provide within ten days after these tablets have been delivered to you for the dismantline of those places devoted to the worship of Bacchus, if there are any, except in case something sacred is concerned in the matter.
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Source of translation: W.M. Roberts, The History of Rome by Titus Livius (London: Dent and Sons, 1912-24), public domain, adapted by Harland; Allan Chester Johnson et al., Ancient Roman Statutes: A Translation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961), 26-27, no. 28, adapted by Harland.