in antiquity, priests of Bellona, the goddess of wars and battles. The bellonari cut and mangled their bodies with knives and daggers in a cruel manner, to pacify the deity. In this they are singular, that they offered their own blood, not that of other creatures, in sacrifice. In the fury and enthusiasm wherewith they were feized on these occasions, they ran about raging, uttering prophecies, and foretelling blood and slaughter, devastations of cities, revolutions of states, and the like: whence Martial calls them turba enheeta Belloneae. In after-times, they seem to have abated much of their zeal and transport, and to have turned the whole into a kind of farce, contenting themselves with making signs and appearances of cutting and wounds. Lampridius tells us, the emperor Commodus, out of a spirit of cruelty, turned the farce again into a tragedy, obliging them to cut and mangle their bodies really.