Romulus

The youths must laugh after their foreheads are wiped. After this they cut the goats’ skins into strips and run about, with nothing on but a girdle, striking all who meet them with the thongs,[*](Cf. Plutarch’s Antony, xii. 1.) and young married women do not try to avoid their blows, fancying that they promote conception and easy child-birth. A peculiarity of the festival is that the Luperci sacrifice a dog also.

A certain Butas, who wrote fabulous explanations of Roman customs in elegiac verse, says that Romulus and Remus, after their victory over Amulius, ran exultantly to the spot where, when they were babes, the she-wolf gave them suck, and that the festival is conducted in imitation of this action, and that the two youths of noble birth run

1. Smiting all those whom they meet, as once with brandished weapons,
2. Down from Alba’s heights, Remus and Romulus ran.

But Caius Acilius writes that before the founding of the city Romulus and his brother once lost their flocks, and after praying to Faunus, ran forth in quest of them naked, that they might not be impeded by sweat; and that this is the reason why the Luperci run about naked. If the sacrifice is a purification, one might say that the dog is sacrificed as being a suitable victim for such rites,

since the Greeks, in their rites of purification, carry forth puppies for burial, and in many places make use of the rites called periskulakismoi; [*](Sacrifices where puppies were killed and carried about.) and if these rites are performed in grateful remembrance of the she-wolf that nourished and preserved Romulus, it is not without reason that the dog is slain, since it is an enemy to wolves, unless, indeed, the animal is thus punished for annoying the Luperci when they run about.