This wretched plague and its more wretched expiation were followed in the next year by a portent grim enough. For suddenly the earth burst apart in the middle of the City, and through a vast chasm the gaping underworld was all at once laid open.
1 Sequitur hanc miseram luem miserioremque eius expiationem proximo anno satis triste prodigium. repente siquidem medio urbis terra dissiluit, uastoque praeruptu hiantia subito inferna patuerunt.
The shameless cavern remained for a long time, its abyss lying open, to the gaze and terror of all, and, as the gods’ interpreters declared, it demanded the unspeakable burial of a living man.
2 manebat diu ad spectaculum terroremque cunctorum patenti uoragine inpudens specus nefariamque uiui hominis sepulturam diis interpretibus expetebat.
Marcus Curtius, a knight, in arms, satisfied those wicked jaws by hurling himself in, and cast to the cruel earth a meagre surfeit — an earth for which it was too little to receive through tombs the dead of so great a pestilence, unless, split open, it also swallowed the living.
3 satisfecit inprobis faucibus praecipitio sui M. Curtius, uir eques armatus, iniecitque crudeli terrae inopimam satietatem, cui parum esset, quod ex tanta pestilentia mortuos per sepulchra susciperet, nisi etiam uiuos scissa sorberet.