sacred, and inviolable, insomuch as if he doe but goe foorth of his house abroad into the citie, and walke in the street,[145] the maner was of all, to clense and sanctifie the body, as if it were steined and polluted. 82. _What is the reason that before the Prætors, generall Captaines and head Magisrates, there be caried bundels of roddes, together with hatchets or axes fastned unto them?_ IS it to signifie, that the anger of the magistrate ought not to be prompt to execution, nor loose and at libertie? Or, because that to undoe and unbinde the said bundels, yeeldeth some time and space for choler to coole, and ire to asswage, which is the cause otherwhiles that they change their mindes, and doe not proceed to punishment? Now forasmuch as among the faults that men commit, some are curable, others remedilesse: the roddes are to reforme those who may be amended; but the hatchets to cut them off who are incorrigible. 83. _What is the cause that the Romanes having intelligence given vnto them, that the Bletonesians, a barbarous nation, had sacrificed unto their gods, a man; sent for the magistrates peremptorily, as intending to punish them: but after they once understood, that they had so done according to an ancient law of their countrey, they let them go againe without any hurt done unto them; charging them onely, that from thence foorth they should not obey such a law; and yet they themselves, not many yeeres before, had caused for to be buried quicke in the place, called the Beast Market, two men and two women, that is to say, two Greekes, and two Gallo-Greekes or Galatians? For this seemeth to be verie absurd, that they themselves should do those things, which they reprooved in others as damnable._ MAY it not be that they judged it an execrable superstition, to sacrifice a man or woman unto the gods, marie unto divels they held it necessarie?