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12. The consul, thinking that he had learned enough about Aebutius to trust his story, sent Aebutia away and asked his mother-in-law to summon to her Hispala, also from the Aventine, a freedwoman and no stranger in the neighbourhood: he wished to ask her also certain questions. [2] Hispala, [p. 251]alarmed by her message, because without knowing1 the reason she was summoned to so important and respected a woman, when she saw the lictors in the vestibule and the consul's retinue and the consul himself, almost swooned. [3] Conducting her into the inner part of the house, with his mother-in-law present, the consul told her that if she could bring herself to tell the truth she had no cause to feel alarmed; she would receive a pledge either from Sulpicia, a woman of such standing, or from himself; she should state to them what rites were usually performed in the nocturnal orgies at the Bacchanalia in the grove of Stimula.2 [4] When she heard this, such fear and trembling seized the woman in all her limbs that for a long time she could not open her mouth. [5] Being at length restored, she said that when quite young and a slave she had been initiated with her mistress; that for many years after her manumission she had known nothing of what went on there. [6] Then the consul praised her on this ground, that she had not denied that she had been initiated; but she was to tell, under the same pledge, the rest as well. [7] When she insisted that she knew nothing more, he told her that she would not receive the same [8??] forgiveness or consideration if she were convicted by the evidence of someone else as if she had confessed of her own accord; the man, he added, who had heard it from her had told him the whole story.

1 B.C. 186

2 Stimula is identified with Semele, the mother of Bacchus. The name is obviously appropriate. The grove was near the Tiber and the Aventine.

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load focus English (Rev. Canon Roberts, 1912)
load focus English (William A. McDevitte, Sen. Class. Mod. Ex. Schol. A.B.T.C.D., 1850)
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  • Commentary references to this page (8):
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 31-32, commentary, 31.37
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 33-34, commentary, 34.19
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 33-34, commentary, 34.7
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 39-40, commentary, 40.34
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 39-40, commentary, 40.44
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 41-42, commentary, 42.40
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 43-44, commentary, 44.34
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, book 45, commentary, 45.43
  • Cross-references to this page (5):
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita, Index, Lucus
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita, Index, Stimulae
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita, Index, Sulpi?ia
    • A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), CONSUL
    • Smith's Bio, Sti'mula
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (7):
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