[115] _Aen._ i. 607 foll. Cp. _Aen._ iii. 429--
Praestat Trinacrii metas lustrare Pachyni
Cessantem, longos et circumflectere cursus:
where the slow movement and circuitous course of a _lustratio_ are in
the poet’s mind.
[116] Marquardt, _Staatsverwaltung_, iii. p. 175. Cp. Serv. _Aen._ iii.
67, and Virg. _Aen._ vi. 229.
[117] Iron was taboo in the grove of Dea Dia: but the Fratres Arvales
had a system of _piacula_ enabling them to use it for pruning, &c.,
when necessary.--Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ 22.
[118] Serv. _Aen._ i. 136, x. 32, xi. 842.
[119] Cato R. R. 139, 140; Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ 136 foll.: cp.
Ovid, _Fasti_ iv. 749 foll.
[120] This is my own inference from the language of Cato in chapters 83
and 141. When the cattle are in the forest, there is a special formula
of prayer for them: see ch. 83. The word _ager_ could hardly, I think,
be taken as including the woodland in which the flocks fed in summer;
and in May, when the _lustratio agri_ took place, they would be already
off the winter pasture. In the formula for this _lustratio_ (141) Cato
does include the _pastores_ and _pecua_; but they are not the most
conspicuous objects of the prayer, and I am inclined to think that they
are mentioned only as belonging to the farm, though not at the moment
within its sacred boundary.
[121] Plin. _N. H._ xvii. 266, xxviii. 78.
[122] _Relig. u. Kultus_, p. 130.
[123] Varro, _L. L._ v. 143; Serv. _Aen._ v. 755 (from Cato); Plut.
_Romulus_ x.
[124] Bücheler, _Umbrica_, p. 42 foll.
[125] Bücheler, _Umbrica_, p. 84 foll.
[126] Perhaps, too, the scramble for the horse’s head between two
divisions of the population was objectionable in their eyes.
[127] _Relig. u. Kultus_, p. 131. On the same day there was a sacrifice
to that fortis dea, Nerio without doubt, who was in some unknown sense
the consort of Mars (Ovid, _Fasti_ iii. 849).
[128] Farnell, _Evolution of Religion_, p. 136.
[129] _De Nat. Deorum_, ii. 36. 82.