And
then the founder, having fitted a plough with a brazen ploughshare, and
yoked to it a bull and a cow, himself ploughs a deep furrow round the
boundaries. It is the duty of his attendants to throw the clods inwards,
which the plough turns up, and to let none of them fall outwards. By
this line they define the extent of the fortifications, and it is called
by contraction, Pomoerium, which means behind the walls or beyond the
walls (_post moenia_). Wherever they intend to place a gate they take
off the ploughshare, and carry the plough over, leaving a space. After
this ceremony they consider the entire wall sacred, except the gates;
but if they were sacred also, they could not without scruple bring in
and out necessaries and unclean things through them.
XII. It is agreed that the foundation of the city took place on the
eleventh day before the Kalends of May (the 21st of April). And on this
day the Romans keep a festival which they call the birthday of the city.
At this feast, originally, we are told, they sacrificed nothing that has
life, but thought it right to keep the anniversary of the birth of the
city pure and unpolluted by blood. However, before the foundation of the
city, they used to keep a pastoral feast called Palilia. The Roman
months at the present day do not in any way correspond to those of
Greece; yet they (the Greeks) distinctly affirm that the day upon which
Romulus founded the city was the 30th of the month.
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