80 CORIOLAXUS.

proceeded to feast and entertain him wth every display of kindness, and for several days after they were in close deliberation together on the prospects of a war. While this design was foi'iuing, there were great trou- bles and commotions at Rome, from the animosity of the senators against the people, heightened just now by the late condemnation of Marcius. Besides that, their sooth- sayers and priests, and even private persons, reported signs and prodigies not to be neglected; one of which is stated to have occurred as follows: Titus Latinus,* a man of ordinary condition, but of a quiet and virtuous char* acter, free from all superstitious fancies, and yet more from vanity and exaggeration, had an apparition in his sleep, as if Jupiter came and bade him tell the senate, that it was with a bad and unacceptable dancer that they had headed his procession. Having beheld the vision, he saidj he did not much attend to it at the first appearance ; but after he had seen and slighted it a second and third time^ he had lost a hopeful son, and was himself struck with a palsy. He was brought into the senate on a litter to tell this, and the story goes, that he had no sooner delivered his message there, but he at once felt his strength return, and got upon his legs, and went home alone, without need of any support. The senators, in wonder and surprise, made a dilis;eut search into the matter. That which his dream alluded to was this: some citizen had, for some heinous oflfence, given up a servant of his to the rest of his fel- lows, with charge to whip him first through the market, and then to kill him ; and while they were executing this command, and scourging the wretch, who screwed and turned himself into all manner of shapes and unseemly motions, through the pain he was in, the solemn proces-

• The coiTect name is probably Atinius, in Livy, is merely a mis*

Titus Latinius, for which Tiberius reading.