The period of the death of Camillus is to be remembered on account of several facts connected with a plague that visited Rome in the year 365. The people, in their despair, for the third time in the history of the city, performed a peculiar sacrifice called the _Lectisternium_ (_lectus_, a couch, _sternere_, to spread), to implore the favor of offended deities. They placed images of the gods upon cushions or couches and offered them viands, as if the images could really eat them. Naturally this did not effect any abatement of the ravaging disease, and under orders of the priests, stage plays were instituted as a means of appeasing the wrath of heaven. The first Roman play- writer, Plautus, did not live till a hundred years after this time, and these performances were trivial imitations of Etruscan acting, which thus came to Rome at second-hand from Greece; but, as the Romans did not particularly delight in intellectual efforts at that time, buffoonery sufficed instead of the wit which gave so much pleasure to the cultivated attendants at the theatre of Athens. Livy says that these plays neither relieved the minds nor the bodies of the Romans; and, in fact, when on one occasion the performances were interrupted by the overflowing waters of the Tiber which burst into the circus, the people turned from the theatre in terror, feeling that their efforts to soothe the gods had been despised. It was at this time that the earth is said to have been opened in the forum by an earthquake, and that Curtius cast himself into it as a sacrifice; but, as we have read of the occurrence before we shall not stop to consider it again. The young hero was called Mettus Curtius in the former instance, but now the name given to him is Marcus Curtius. IX. HOW THE REPUBLIC OVERCAME ITS NEIGHBORS.