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[6] Nevertheless, he drenched the altars with the blood of an excessive number of victims, sometimes offering up a hundred oxen at once, with countless flocks of various other animals, and with white birds 1 hunted out by land and sea; to such a degree that almost every day his soldiers, who gorged themselves on the abundance of meat, living boorishly and corrupted by their eagerness for drink, were carried through the squares to their lodgings on the shoulders of passers-by from the public temples, where they indulged in banquets 2 that deserved punishment rather than indulgence; especially the Petulantes 3 and the Celts, whose wilfulness at that time had passed all bounds.

1 A colour of good omen; cf. Juv. xiii. 141, gallinae filius albae; Suet., Galba, 1; Hor., Sat. i. 7, 8, equis albis; etc.

2 I.e. sacrificial feasts.

3 Cf. xx. 4, 2, note.

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