Senatusconsultum de Bacchanalibus (186 B.C.) The so-called Senatusconsultum de Bacchanalibus is known as the Roman Senate's edict attempting to suppress Bacchanalia (mysteries of Bacchus, one of the cultic names of the god Dionysus) in Rome and Italy. The edict was issued in186 B.C., but the bronze table with the edict’s text was discovered accidentally in 1640 during the excavations for the foundation of Prince Giovan Battista Cigala's palace in Tiriolo, near Catanzaro, in southern Italy. It is likely that the table had previously been nailed onto some support, perhaps on the walls of some important building. Now preserved in the Antique Collection of the Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna, the table was for a long time believed to be the original edict of 186 B.C.. It became clear now that it represents in fact a copy of the edict, in the form of a circular letter, published by the presiding praetor and addressed to the local authorities. The cult rites were forbidden throughout Italy, except in certain special cases which had to have the specific approval by the Senate. The activity of all Bacchanal societies was banned and the lawbreakers sentenced to death. The text of the inscription opens with legal conventional expressions, before introducing various prohibitions relating to Bacchic rites, prescriptions for local authorities and detailed decisions of the Senate on specific cases. It is an important source about the organization of those rites as well as for functioning of southern Italian Dionysian societies and their gathering places. The inscription confirms Livy’s account in his history of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita Libri 39. 8-19), which depicts the Bacchanalia as secret feasts of seditious and violent people who perform all kinds of vileness and moral turpitude. Livy narrates that in 186 B.C. a "secret conspiracy" (intestina coniuratio) was organized by those depraved members of Dionysian societies, associated with murder, poisoning, and subversion of the state. The followers of the Dionysian cults, namely Bacchants, appear as dangerous public enemies of the populous Romanus Quiritium. In other words, they were held to be a threat to the security of the state. When the coniuratio was discovered, the consuls in power at that time, Spurius Postumius