Then some with a bloody knife mark the
foreheads of the youths, and others at once wipe the blood away with
wool dipped in milk. The youths are expected to laugh when it is wiped
away. After this they cut the skins of the goats into strips and run
about naked, except a girdle round the middle, striking with the thongs
all whom they meet. Women in the prime of life do not avoid being
struck, as they believe that it assists them in childbirth and promotes
fertility. It is also a peculiarity of this festival that the Luperci
sacrifice a dog. One Bontes, who wrote an elegiac poem on the origin of
the Roman myths, says that when Romulus and his party had killed
Amulius, they ran back in their joy to the place where the she-wolf
suckled them when little, and that the feast is typical of this, and
that the young nobles run,
"As, smiting all they met, that day
From Alba Romulus and Remus ran."
The bloody sword is placed upon their foreheads in token of the danger
and slaughter of that day, and the wiping with the milk is in
remembrance of their nurse. Caius Acilius tells us that, before the
foundation of Rome, the cattle of Romulus and Remus were missing, and
they, after invoking Faunus, ran out to search for them, naked, that
they might not be inconvenienced by sweat; and that this is the reason
that the Luperci ran about naked. As for the dog, one would say that if
the sacrifice is purificatory, it is sacrificed on behalf of those who
use it.
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