1 Earliest Rome

Livy, History XXX1X.8-14 (abridged)
12.1 The cult of Bacchus
accusations against secret religious groups, being made later (for example)
against the Christians (11.1 Id).
The following year diverted the consuls Spurius Postumius Albinus and Quintus Marcius
Philippus from the army and concern for wars and provinces to the repression of an
internal conspiracy . . . The senate decreed that both consuls should undertake an
enquiry into secret conspiracies. A lowborn Greek came first to Etruria, a man with none
of the many skills which that most learned of all nations has introduced among us for the
tending of mind and body, but a mere sacrificer and fortune-teller; nor was he even
someone who fills minds with error by publicizing his religio and professing openly his
business and teachings, but an overseer of secret and nocturnal rites. There were
initiations which were at first imparted only to a few, but then began to spread widely
among men and women. To religio were added the pleasures of wine and feasting, to
entice more people in. When wine had inflamed them, at night with males mingled with
females, young with old, and when all sense of modesty was extinguished, all types of
indecency began to occur, since each person had to hand the pleasure to satisfy the
cravings to which he was naturally most inclined. Nor was there just one type of vice, the
promiscuous sex between freeborn men and women: false witnesses, forged seals, wills
and evidence also emerged from the same workshop; also poisonings and domestic
killings, of such a sort that sometimes not even the bodies remained for burial. Much was
ventured by trickery, more by violence, which was concealed because the voices of those
crying for help amid the sex and murders could never be heard over the wails and the
beat of drums and clash of cymbals.
(9) The damaging effects of this evil spread from Etruria to Rome like a plague. At first
the size of the city, which could accommodate and tolerate such evils, kept them hidden,
but finally information reached the consul Postumius in the following manner.