The extraordinary _vota_ were innumerable. They were occasioned by dangers or misfortunes of various kinds, the magistrate undertaking to dedicate something to the god concerned if the State should have come safely through the peril. Many temples had their origin in this practice;[414] we meet also with _ludi_, special sacrifices, or a tithe of the booty taken in war. In two or three cases Livy has copied the formula from the _tabulae_ of the pontifices; thus before the war with Antiochus in 191 B.C., the consul recited the following words after the pontifex maximus: "Si duellum quod cum Antiocho rege sumi populus iussit, id ex sententia senatus populique Romani confectum erit; tum tibi Iuppiter populus Romanus ludos magnos dies decem continuos faciet ... quisquis magistratus eos ludos quando ubique faxit, hi ludi recte facti, donaque data recte sunto."[415] This document dates from the days of the decay of the Roman religion, and is, of course, modernised by Livy; but it may give an idea of what is meant by writers who speak of an element of bargain or covenant in these _vota_. Still more elaborate, and probably more antique, is the famous formula of the vow of the _ver sacrum_ in the darkest hour of the war with Hannibal.[416] This very curious rite, which proves beyond question the devotion of the Italian stocks to the principle of the _votum_, consisted of a promise to dedicate to Mars or Jupiter all the valuable products of a single spring, including the male children born at that time; to this the Romans had recourse for the last time in 217 B.C., and Livy has fortunately preserved the words of the vow. These, with the exception of the dedication of the children, which is judiciously omitted, probably stand much as they had come down from a remote antiquity. The _votum_ is put in the form of a _rogatio_ to the people, without whose sanction it could not be put in force; are they willing to dedicate to Jupiter all the young of oxen, sheep, or pigs born in the spring five years after date, if the State shall have been preserved during those years from all its enemies? The curious feature of the document is, not that it binds the deity to any course of action, but that it secures the individual Roman against his anger in case of any chance slip in his part of the process, and the people against any evil consequences arising from such a slip or from misdoing on the part of an individual. "Si quis clepsit, ne populo scelus esto neve cui cleptum erit: si atro die faxit insciens, probe factum esto."[417] Of this formula a recent writer of great learning and ability has written thus: "The well-known liturgical archive containing Rome's address to Jupiter in the critical days of the Hannibalic war is a wary and cleverly drawn legal document, intended to bind the god as well as the State."[418] He is no exception to the rule that those who have not habitually occupied themselves with the Roman religion are liable to misinterpret its details.