Mommsen states (ii, 70) that at this epoch the Romans kept "equally aloof from superstition and unbelief," but this is inaccurate on both sides. The narrative of Livy exhibits among the people a boundless and habitual superstition. The records of absurd prodigies of every sort so throng his pages that he himself repeatedly ventures to make light of them. Talking oxen, skies on fire, showers of flesh, crows and mice eating gold, rivers flowing blood, showers of milk--such were the reports chronically made to the Roman government by its pious subjects, and followed by anxious religious ceremonies at Rome (cp. Livy, iii, 5, 10; x, 27; xi, 28-35; xxiv, 44; xxvii, 4, 11, 23, etc., etc. In the index to Drakenborch's Livy there are over five columns of references to prodigia). On the other hand, though superstition was certainly the rule, there are traces of rationalism. On the next page after that cited, Mommsen himself admits that the faith of the people had already been shaken by the interference allowed to the priestly colleges in political matters; and in another chapter (bk. ii, ch. 13; vol. ii, 112) he recalls that a consul of the Claudian gens had jested openly at the auspices in the first Punic war, 249 B.C. The story is told by Cicero, De natura Deorum, ii, 3, and Suetonius, Tiberius, c. 2. The sacred poultry, on being let out of their coop on board ship, would not feed, so that the auspices could not be taken; whereupon the consul caused them to be thrown into the water, etiam per jocum Deos inridens, saying they might drink if they would not eat. His colleague Junius in the same war also disregarded the auspices; and in both cases, according to Balbus the Stoic in Cicero's treatise, the Roman fleets were duly defeated; whereupon Claudius was condemned by the people, and Junius committed suicide. Cp. Valerius Maximus, l. i, c. iv, § 3.