66 ' ROMULUS.

will help conception and child-birth. Another thing pe- culiar to this feast is for the Luperci to sacrifice a dog. Butas,a certain poet who wrote fabulous explanations of Roman customs in elegiac verses, says, that Romulus and Remus, after the conquest of Amidius, ran joyfully to the place where the wolf gave them suck ; and that in imita- tion of that, this feast was held, and two young noblemen ran — Striking at all, as when from Alba town, With sword in Land, the twins came hurrying down ; and that the bloody knife applied to their foreheads was a sign of the danger and bloodshed of that day ; the cleansing of them in milk, a remembrance of their food and nourishment, Caius Acilius writes, that, before the city was built, the cattle of Romulus and Remus one day going astray, they, praying to the god Faunus, ran out to seek them naked, wishing not to be troubled with sweat, and that this is why the Luperci run naked. If the sacrifice be by way of purification, a dog might very well be sacrificed ; for the Greeks, in their lustrations, carry out young dogs, and frequently use this ceremony of perisct/lacismiis, as they call it, Or if again it is a sacri- fice of gratitude to the wolf that nourished and preserved Romulus, there is good reason in killing a dog, as being an enemy to wolves. Unless indeed, after all, the creature is punished for hindering the Luperci in their running. They say, too, Romulus was the first that consecra- ted holy fire, and instituted holy virgins to keep it, called vestals ; others ascribe it to Numa Pompilius ; agreeing, however, that Romulus was otherwise eminently religious, and skilled in divination, and for that reason carried the litiius, a crooked rod with which soothsayers describe the quarters of the heavens, when they sit to

observe the flights of birds. This of his, being kept in