Ab urbe condita

Titus Livius (Livy)

Livy. History of Rome, Volumes 1-2. Roberts, Canon, Rev, translator. London, New York: J. M. Dent and Sons; E. P. Dutton and Co., 1912.

The spear on which the consul stands, when repeating the formula of devotion, must not pass into the enemy's hands; should this happen a suovetaurilia [*](for a description of the sacrifice known as the suovetaurilia, see note 3, Book III.)must be offered as a propitiation to Mars.

Although the memory of every traditional custom relating to either human or divine things has been lost through our abandonment of the old religion of our fathers in favour of foreign novelties, I thought it not alien from my subject to record these regulations in the very words in which they have been handed down.