Fabiola : or, The church of the catacombs - Digital Repository Services

CHAPTER VI.
use all the means in their power to invoke the favor of the gods
The greatest importance was attached to this campaign. It had
to carry the banner of the Korn;itn to the eastern banks of the
Danube, and to announce the fame of the Ticlorious arms to the
surrounding barbarians as far down as the land of the Jazygan,
now called Hungary, and the woody shores of the Theiss. The
enemy was known to them; and the renown of Ariovist, the
general of the Marcomanni and of Armin's victory, were well
remembered by them ;
and could they have forgotten the bravery
of the Germans, they had a memento of it, in the annual procession
of the Capitoline geese, which by their cackling once saved
Home from, a nightly attack of those barbarians. Countless
sacrifices bled on the altars of Aquileia, as well as at Athens.
All the purifications customary since the time of Numa, were
performed. There was also a Lektisteruium of seven days celebrated,
which consisted of meats being offered to the gods on
small tables, before which the statues were left lying, but those
Of the goddesses were placed sitting. * To the east of the Acropo-
lis uot far from Adrian's Arch, where to this day, sixteen gi-
gantic pillars of Corinthian architecture stand, was the magnificent
temple of Jupiter Olympus. This edifice was supported by
a forest of pillars, one hundred and twenty in number, and was
two thousand three hundred feet in circumference. It was Adrian
who completed this ancient building. A countless number
of statues ornamented the whole, but the one which held the first
astonishing impression on the traveler; which can only bo exceeded
by viewing the remnant of the Acropolis a city of gods
reduced to fragments!
A clear morning smiled^rom the heavens, the sun had scarcely
appeared above the horizon, when the men of Athens tit to bear
arms, assembled together in their coats of mail and brazen helmets,
glittering in the morning sun. Lucius was also ready, and
whispered mysteriously in his mother's car, that the Augurs com-
plained, the day previous, that the sacred chickens would not
feed, and that at the last augury, neither a raven nor crow had
appeared. "Obstinate ravens," added he, "at other times they
will croak all the day lung."
"Therefore, we must pray the more for the assistance of
the gods," replied Metella, who was just having a parsley
wreath twined through her hair. "An unfortunate augury,"
said she, " is a serious matter, for thereby people lose courage.
Have you not heard what the oracle at Delphi has proclaimed
? "
"O, the oracle," said Lucius, "that knows no longer whether
Croesus is boiling a lamb or a tortoise, f The golden treasures
of Delphi would be more acceptable to us now than its leathern
oracles, and a Pythaulus is more thought of in those days than
a Pythius."t
Stolberg's History d. R. I. viii, 8. 73.
tA jest on the famous words of the Oracle in the time of rnrsns. who sent a
messenger to Delphi to ask what he was doing at home at that moment. The
Oracle gave a correct answer: "That the king was standing before a cauldron
boiling a lamb and a tori'
$ There were at Chla time, according to Pausanius. tn books, great treasures
in Delphi: Pvthaiilus the combatant with tin- l>: ton :i> called
.!-.) The Oracle gave ita last answer abom ih -i-t