404 CALLIA RULMU Cicero (Leg. II.32-35) warned against the private cult of new or strange divinities, evoking the ominous events of the bacchanalian crisis. Dionysus of Halicarnassus also linked the importance and necessity of a proper way to honor the gods with the virtues of good citizens. According to him, Roman citizens (who allegedly h a d some form of aversion towards foreign gods) had to ‘scrutinize’ the foreign ways of worship and only adopt the best and decorous ones 45. Livy also insists upon the necessity of being protected from foreign cults that could pollute the celebrated more Romano (Hist. 39.16.8-9). The same fear is tangible in the account made by Valerius Maximus (I.3.3) 46 of the ban of the Jews from Rome (138 or 139 BCE) promulgated by Cornelius Hispanus, called Hispalus by Valerius 47. Not surprisingly, many stories circulated at the beginning of the first century AD about how to worship the gods properly, about the heroic deeds of people who sacrificed themselves to the gods for the common good, and about the intimate relationship between respect for the natural law, the prosperity of a the state, and the commonwealth 48. Valerius exalts the amore patrie and the pietas itorum 9; Goldbach 1994): “ . . . the emperors were divi – deified – rather than dei . . . The emperors were honoured and celebrated, but they were not the same as Zeus, Heracles, or Asclepius. Even though Greek is less able to accommodate the distinction between divus and deus, Greek writers show un- mistakably that they felt the difference” (328). Cf. p. 198-206 of the same book, where she quotes, for instance, Aristides (Or. XIX), who reports that Smyrna enjoyed its unparalleled prosperity kaì pròs theôn kaì pròs humôn (“ thanks to the gods and to you [the emperors]”) (199). Dionysus of Halicarnassus, The Roman Antiquities (LOEB ; Cambridge 45 – London 1968) II.18.1-3. Cf. also II.19.1-5, where talking about the imported cult of the goddess Cybelê in 205 BCE to Rome from Pessinus (Asia Minor), Dionysus makes fun of the awkward way the Phrygians used to worship: “ [they] carry her image in procession through the city ... [they] walk in proc- ession in a party-coloured robe, begging alms and escorted by flute-players. The Roman senate issued a decree according to which no native Roman could follow such pompous display, because so cautious are they (the Romans) about admitting any foreign religious customs and so great is their aversion to all pompous display that is wanting in decorum” (II.19.5). It is worth nothing that, in this section of his book, Valerius puts on the 46 same level the Jews and the Chaldaeans (astrologers). Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Hispanus, praetor for foreigners in 138 (or 47 139) BCE. E.g.,Valerius Maximus, V 6. Preface: “Piety (pietas) has done justice to . 48