1It happened that the Great Games were being prepared at Rome to be held again. 1The reason for repeating them had been this: on the morning of the games, before the show had begun, a certain head of a household had driven a slave, flogged under the fork, through the middle of the Circus; 1the games had then been started as if that act had nothing to do with religion. 2Not long afterwards Titus Latinius, a man of the plebs, had a dream: Jupiter seemed to tell him that the leading dancer at the games had displeased him; 3unless those games were repeated on a magnificent scale, there would be danger to the city; 3he was to go and report this to the consuls.
3Although his mind was by no means free of religious scruple, yet his awe of the magistrates' majesty won out, together with the fear that he would become a laughing-stock on men's lips. 4That hesitation cost him dear; 4for within a few days he lost his son. 4So that the cause of this sudden disaster should not be in doubt, that same figure appeared before him, sick at heart, in his sleep, and seemed to ask whether he had a large enough payment for scorning the god's will; 4a larger one awaited him, unless he went quickly and told the consuls. 5Now the matter was more pressing. 5Still he delayed and put it off, and then a violent illness attacked him with sudden paralysis.
6Then indeed the anger of the gods taught him a lesson. 6Worn out, therefore, by the evils past and threatening, he called his relatives into council, and when he had set out what he had seen and heard, Jupiter appearing so often in his sleep, the threats and anger of heaven made real in his own misfortunes, then with the unhesitating agreement of all who were present he is carried down in a litter to the Forum, to the consuls. 7From there, carried into the senate house by order of the consuls, he related the same story to the senators, to the great astonishment of all, and behold, another miracle: the tradition is that he who had been carried into the senate house disabled in every limb returned home on his own feet when he had done his duty.