Galba's Commission Relating To Temples (Tacitus, Agricola, 6.5.)

Extract

The word dona is an embarrassment here. If Agricola was appointed to ‘check the gifts of the temples’, that is, gifts which temples had received, it seems an odd restriction in a phrase which one would expect to refer to temple possessions in general. What the context, especially in the word sacrilegium, makes clear, as commentators have duly noted, is that the temples suffered losses through the plunder of their works of art by Nero and also by others, although the result (effecit commends itself) tended to obliterate the guilt of others. This was after the fire at Rome in A.D. 64. See H. Furneaux rev. J. G. C. Anderson (1922), pp.55 f.; R. Till (1961), p.62; I. Forni (1962), p.108; R. M. Ogilvie and Ian Richmond (1967), p.152.