Explanation: The Sibylline Books were a collection of oracular utterances that the Romans would refer to in times of crisis. They were supposed to be highly poetic, and were written in Greek, requiring some amount of interpretation to find a relation to the current crisis at hand - especially since verses were chosen to be consulted essentially at random by ritual practices.
During the Second Punic War, after a significant percentage of the Roman citizen population was killed at Cannae, the decision was made to consult the books - not unusual. But the interpretation which they returned was.
Human sacrifice.
Two Greek slaves and two Celtic slaves, one man and one woman of each, were to be buried alive in a sacrifice to the gods.
Later Roman writers would record this incident with obvious discomfort, as traditional Roman mores regarded human sacrifice as both offensive to the gods and uncivilized and un-Roman.
People will do anything when they’re desperate enough.
The Second Punic War would drag on for another decade-and-a-half. If the sacrifice invoked the gods’ favor, it was certainly slow in arriving.
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Explanation: The Sibylline Books were a collection of oracular utterances that the Romans would refer to in times of crisis. They were supposed to be highly poetic, and were written in Greek, requiring some amount of interpretation to find a relation to the current crisis at hand - especially since verses were chosen to be consulted essentially at random by ritual practices.
During the Second Punic War, after a significant percentage of the Roman citizen population was killed at Cannae, the decision was made to consult the books - not unusual. But the interpretation which they returned was.
Human sacrifice.
Two Greek slaves and two Celtic slaves, one man and one woman of each, were to be buried alive in a sacrifice to the gods.
Later Roman writers would record this incident with obvious discomfort, as traditional Roman mores regarded human sacrifice as both offensive to the gods and uncivilized and un-Roman.
People will do anything when they’re desperate enough.
The Second Punic War would drag on for another decade-and-a-half. If the sacrifice invoked the gods’ favor, it was certainly slow in arriving.