On the Happy Life, Section 26

Seneca — The Senator

You need this advice even more when you hear wisdom speaking. When someone shakes a rattle and claims the gods told him to do it, when someone cuts his arms and shoulders until they bleed (calling it religious devotion), when someone crawls down the street on his knees wailing, or when some old man dressed in white robes comes out in broad daylight with a lamp and laurel branch shouting that a god is angry — you all gather around and hang on every word. You get more excited as you feed off each other's amazement, convinced this person speaks for the divine.

Seneca — The Senator Original

It is much more necessary that you should be ordered to do this, in order that whenever utterance is made by that oracle, you may listen to it with attention and in silence. Whenever any one beats a sistrum,[6] pretending to do so by divine command, any proficient in grazing his own skin covers his arms and shoulders with blood from light cuts, any one crawls on his knees howling along the street, or any old man clad in linen comes forth in daylight with a lamp and laurel branch and cries out that one of the gods is angry, you crowd round him and listen to his words, and each increases the other's wonderment by declaring him to be divinely inspired.