[55]
Listen now to the decision of the senate, which has at all times been
approved of by the decision of the people. Our ancestors, O
judges, ordained that the sacred rites of Ceres should be performed with the very strictest religious
reverence and the greatest solemnity; which, as they had been originally
derived from the Greeks, had always been conducted by Greek priestesses, and
were called Greek rites. But when they were selecting a priestess from
Greece to teach us that Greek
sacred ceremony, and to perform it, still they thought it right that it
should be a citizen who was sacrificing for citizens, in order that she
might pray to the immortal gods with knowledge, indeed, derived from a
distant and foreign source but with feelings belonging to one of our own
people and citizens. I see that these priestesses were for the most part
Neapolitans or Velians, and those are notoriously federate cities. I am not
speaking of any ancient cases, I am only mentioning things that have
happened lately, as, for instance, that before the freedom of the city was
conferred on the Velians, Caius Valerius Flaccus being the city praetor,
did, in accordance with a resolution passed by the senate, submit a motion
to the people concerning a woman of Velia, called Calliphana, mentioning her expressly by name,
for the purpose of making her a Roman citizen. Are we then to suppose that
the Velians ratified the law which was then passed about her; or that that
priestess was not made a Roman citizen; or that the treaty was violated by
the senate and people of Rome?
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