365. The people, in their despair, for the third time in the history of
the city, performed a peculiar sacrifice called the _Lectisternium_
(_lectus_, a couch, _sternere_, to spread), to implore the favor of
offended deities. They placed images of the gods upon cushions or
couches and offered them viands, as if the images could really eat
them. Naturally this did not effect any abatement of the ravaging
disease, and under orders of the priests, stage plays were instituted
as a means of appeasing the wrath of heaven. The first Roman play-
writer, Plautus, did not live till a hundred years after this time, and
these performances were trivial imitations of Etruscan acting, which
thus came to Rome at second-hand from Greece; but, as the Romans did
not particularly delight in intellectual efforts at that time,
buffoonery sufficed instead of the wit which gave so much pleasure to
the cultivated attendants at the theatre of Athens. Livy says that
these plays neither relieved the minds nor the bodies of the Romans;
and, in fact, when on one occasion the performances were interrupted by
the overflowing waters of the Tiber which burst into the circus, the
people turned from the theatre in terror, feeling that their efforts to
soothe the gods had been despised. It was at this time that the earth
is said to have been opened in the forum by an earthquake, and that
Curtius cast himself into it as a sacrifice; but, as we have read of
the occurrence before we shall not stop to consider it again. The young
hero was called Mettus Curtius in the former instance, but now the name
given to him is Marcus Curtius.




IX.