The person who finally broke was, astonishingly, the Pontifex Maximus, the head of the college of priests who oversaw state religion. Admittedly, the priesthood wasn’t exactly a spiritual calling in Rome, but it was still a bit like the Archbishop of Canterbury going full Rambo when Scipio Nasica lost his patience, stood up in the temple and shouted, ‘As the consul is a traitor for letting the whole Empire and its laws collapse, I’ll fix this.’ (I’m paraphrasing a bit, but so were the Roman historians, who weren’t there either.)
