132 VARRO ON FARMING [bk. 



tulus, who was the foster-father of Romulus and 

 Remus, and brought them up, was a shepherd? 

 Will it not be obvious that they were themselves 

 shepherds, if we consider that they chose, as the 

 time to found their city, a shepherd-festival (the 

 Parilia)?' Is not the same thing proved by the fact 

 that a fine '^ is even nowadays estimated, when the 

 ancient custom is followed, in terms of sheep and 

 oxen; that the most ancient copper coinage^ is 

 stamped with the figure of an ox; that when the 

 10 city was founded the position of the walls and gates* 

 was marked out by a bull and cow, that when the 

 Roman people is purified by the Suomtaurilia^ a 



' Parilihus. 21st April. Varro, L. L., vi, 3, calls the festival 

 Palilia — Palilia dicta a Pale quod ei feriae. Cicero generally 

 writes Parilia. For a full and interesting account of this 

 festival cf. Ovid, Fasti, iv, 721-82. 



^ Multa. Cf. Pliny, N. H., xviii, 3; Aulus Gellius, xi, i; 

 Servius (ad Georg., iii, 387), where it appears that one murder 

 cost a ram in the time of the kings ! 



^ Aes antiquissimum. The as of Servius Tullius, cf. Pliny 

 (xviii, 3): Sefvius rex ovium boumque effigie primus aes sig' 

 navit. 



* Oiia essent muri. Cf. Servius (Aeneid, v, 755): "Which 

 Cato in his Origins says was the way. For the founders of a 

 city yoked a bull and cow together — the bull to the right the 

 cow on the inside — and . . . held the plough-handle inclined 

 so that all the clods fell on the inside. And thus, by the furrow 

 traced, they marked the position of the walls; lifting the 

 plough at the places where gates were to be." 



Varro, L. L. , v, 32 : Oppida condehant in Latio Etrusco ritu 

 multi, id est iunctis bobus, tauro et vacca interiore aratro circum- 

 agebant sulcujn. 



