No sign marked the extreme gravity of the occasion.
"Let the sacred chickens be brought," said Lentulus.
Never a lip twitched or curled in all that august multitude while several public attendants brought in a wooden cage containing three or four rather skinny specimens of poultry.

Not even Drusus saw anything really ridiculous when Lentulus arose, took grain from an attendant, and scattered a quantity of it before the coop.

Close at his elbow stood the augur, to interpret the omen,--a weazened, bald-headed old senator, who wore a purple-striped tunic,[138] and carried in his hand a long stick,[139] curved at its head into a spiral.

Drusus knew perfectly well that the fowls had been kept without food all that day; but it would have seemed treason to all the traditions of his native land to cry out against this pompous farce.

The hungry chickens pecked up the grain.