ABSTRACT
In 139 bc, by order of a Praetorian edict, astrologers were expelled from Rome and Italy. Our principal source for this event is the Tiberian author Valerius Maximus, whose Facta et Dicta Memorabilia, one of the few extant collections of Latin exempla from the imperial period, is at this very point plagued by a major lacuna in all extant manuscripts. 1 The chapter on superstitions (1.3), however, in which this exemplum falls, has been preserved in the two late antique epitomes of Valerius’ work by Julius Paris and Januarius Nepotianus.
