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When the Romans learned that the people called Bletonesii,Of Bletisa in Spain, according to Cichorius, Römische Studien (Berlin, 1922). a barbarian tribe, had sacrificed a man to the gods, why did they send for the tribal rulers with intent to punish them, but, when it was made plain that they had done thus in accordance with a certain custom, why did the Romans set them at liberty, but forbid the practice for the future? Yet they themselves, not many years before, had buried alive two men and two women, two of them Greeks, two Gauls, in the place called the Forum Boarium. It certainly seems strange that they themselves should do this, and yet rebuke barbarians on the ground that they were acting with impiety.