" The decree passed without opposition, but was
followed by letters from Tiberius. In them having gently chid the Tribune,
"as young and therefore unskilled in the ancient usages," he upbraided
Gallus, "that he who was so long practised in the science of sacred
ceremonies, should without taking the opinion of his own college, without
the usual reading and deliberation with the other Priests, deal, by
surprise, with a thin Senate, to admit a prophetic book of an uncertain
author." He also advertised them "of the conduct of Augustus, who, to
suppress the multitude of fictious predictions everywhere published under
the solemn name of the Sibyl, had ordained, that within a precise day,
they should be carried to the City Praetor; and made it unlawful to keep
them in private hands." The same had likewise been decreed by our
ancestors, when after the burning of the capitol in the Social War, the
Rhymes of the Sibyl (whether there were but one, or more) were everywhere
sought, in Samos, Ilium, and Erythrae, through Africa too and Sicily and
all the Roman colonies, with injunctions to the Priests, that, as far as
human wit could enable them, they would separate the genuine.
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