3. In the same year, the temple of Juno Lacinia was uncovered. Quintus Fulvius Flaccus, the censor, was erecting a temple to Equestrian Fortune, which he had vowed when prætor during the Celtiberian war, with anxious desire that it should not be surpassed by any other at Rome, either in size or magnificence. Thinking that he would add a very great ornament to this temple if the tiles were marble, he went to Bruttium, and stripped, off about the half of those belonging to the temple of the Lacinian Juno; for he computed that so many would be sufficient to cover the one he was building. Ships were in readiness to take on board the materials, while the allies were deterred by the authority of the censor from preventing the sacrilege. When the censor returned, the marble was landed and carried to the temple; but though he made no mention of the place from which it was brought, yet such an affair could not be concealed. Accordingly, considerable murmuring arose in the senate; from all sides of the house a demand was made that the consuls should lay that matter before the senate. When the censor, on being summoned, appeared in the senate-house, they all, both separately and in a body, inveighed against him with great asperity. They cried out that “he was not content with violating the most venerable temple in all that part of the world, a temple which neither Pyrrhus nor Hannibal had violated; but he had stripped it shamefully, and almost demolished it. Though created censor for the purpose of regulating men’s manners, and bound in duty, according to long-established rules, to enforce the repairing of edifices for public worship, and the keeping them in due order, he had nevertheless gone about through the cities of the allies, stripping the roofs of their sacred buildings, and even demolishing them. In a word, what might be deemed scandalous if practised on private houses, he committed against the temples of the immortal gods; and that he involved the Roman people in the guilt of impiety, building temples with the ruins of temples; as if the deities were not the same in all places, but that some should be decorated with the spoils of others.” When it was evident what were the sentiments of the senators, before their opinion was asked; when the question was put, they unanimously concurred in voting, that a contract should be entered into for carrying the tiles back to the temple, and that atonements should be offered to Juno. What regarded the atonements was carefully executed; the contractors made a report that they were obliged to leave the marble in the court of the temple, because no workman could be found who knew how to replace the same.