Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 29
Frank Gardener Moore, Professor Emeritus in Columbia University, Ed.

14. Although Africa had not been openly assigned as a province, while the senators kept the matter dark, I believe, for fear the Carthaginians might know in advance, nevertheless the people were aroused to hope that the war would be waged that year in Africa, and that the end of the Punic war was at hand. [2] That situation had filled men's [p. 259]minds with superstitious fears and they were¹ indined both to report and to believe portents. [3] All the greater was the number of them in circulation: that two suns had been seen, and that at night there had been light for a time;² and that at Setia a meteor³ had been seen shooting from east to west; that at Tarracina a city-gate had been struck by lightning, at Anagnia a gate and also the wall at many points; that in the temple of Juno Sospita at Lanuvium a noise was heard with a dreadful crash. [4] To expiate these there was a single day of prayer, and on account of the shower of stones nine days of rites⁴ were observed. [5] In addition they deliberated on the reception of the Idaean Mother,⁵ in regard to whom not only had Marcus Valerius, one of the ambassadors, arriving in advance, reported that she would be in Italy very soon, but also there was recent news that she was already at Tarracina. [6] It was no unimportant decision that occupied the senate — the question who was the best man in the state. [7] At any rate every man would have preferred a real victory in that contest to any high commands or magistracies, whether conferred by vote of the senators or of the people. [8] Publius Scipio, son of the Gnaeus who had fallen in Spain, was the young man not yet of an age to be quaestor,⁶ whom they judged to be the best of good men among all the [9] citizens. If writers who lived nearest in time to men who [p. 261]remembered those days had handed down by what⁷ virtues the senate was led to make that judgment, I should indeed gladly hand it on to posterity. But I shall not interject my own opinions, reached by conjecture in a matter buried by the lapse of [10] time. Publius Cornelius was ordered to go to Ostia with all the matrons to meet the goddess, and himself to receive her from the ship, and carrying her to land to turn her over to the matrons to [11] carry. After the ship had reached the mouth of the river Tiber, in compliance with the order he sailed out into open water on a ship, received the goddess from her priests⁸ and carried her to [12] land. The foremost matrons in the state, among whom the name of one in particular, that of Claudia Quinta,⁹ is conspicuous, received her. Claudia's repute, previously not unquestioned, as tradition reports it, has made her purity the more celebrated among posterity by a service so [13] devout. The matrons passed the goddess from hand to hand in an unbroken succession to each other, while the entire city poured out to meet her. Censers had been placed before the doors along the route of the bearers, and kindling their incense, people prayed that gracious and benignant she might enter the city of Rome. It was to the Temple of Victory, which is on the Palatine, that they carried the goddess on the day before the Ides of April, and that was a holy [14] day. The people thronged to the [p. 263]Palatine bearing gifts for the goddess, and there¹⁰ was a banquet of the gods, and games also, called the Megalesia.¹¹