679 On the third day, after the Hyades have withdrawn, when the daylight is rising, the Circus will entertain horse teams having been divided by stall barriers. Why, then, might foxes, having been sent out tied up with pine torches, bring flaming tails? The reason it exists must be taught to me.
683 In Carseolum, the cold ground has not been ornamented with the olives that have (usually) been produced, but the field is gifted towards standing crops; here I was seeking the Pelignans, my native lands, small but always wet with perpetual rain.
687 We have entered a dwelling accustomed to an ancient foreigner; just now Phoebus Apollo had removed the collars from his horses, who have completed their service. He indeed does great things for me, and yet he was accustomed to tell these things, from which he might instruct my ruling work:
691 “In this field—” he says, (and he shows the field) “—a frugal farmer-woman possessed a small farm, together with her stern husband. He was cultivating his own land, if he was in possession of a plough, whether it was the type of a curved scythe or of a two-prong hoe. Just now she was cleaning out their country-house, standing on pillars; at this time she was putting an egg, which must be kept warm, in the down-feathers of its mother; she gathers either green mallows or white mushrooms or makes the humble hearth warm with beloved fire, and still she keeps her hands busy with incessant shuttle-spears, and she prepares the defenses against the threats of the winter-cold. Her playful son was in his first age, and he had added twice five years to two years; he ensnared the vixen-fox in a valley at the end of a grove of willows: she had stolen many birds from the pen. He envelops the captive fox in straw stubble and hay and applies flames: that fox escapes the burning hands, from which she flees. She sets fire to the fields, covered with the harvested crops; she was giving the abundance, the golden things, to the destructive flames. The act has ceased, the memorial remains; for, too, even now a certain Carseolanian law forbids to name the fox. And so that her species might be cleansed from the punishment, she burns herself for the Cerialia; just as she has destroyed the crops, she herself is ruined.”