721 Night has departed, and Dawn appears; I am summoned for the Paralia: I am not asked in error, if kind Pales is favorable.
723 Kind Pales, may You, sacred to shepherds, applaud my celebratory singing, if I honor Your festivals with my service. Certainly I carried the holy purgations in my full hand: the ashes of a calf, and the stalks of a bean-plant: certainly I leapt over flames, set out three times in a row; the soaked laurel branch sent off dripping water drops; the Goddess, having been roused, exists and is favorable to my work: the ship departs from the dock-yards, now my sails possess their own winds.
731 Go! Seek, people, the incense of the virginal altar! Vesta will bestow it, you will be purified with the service of Vesta. The blood of horses and calves will be the incense on the hot cinders; the third things are the hard things, the empty tops of beans. Shepherd, perform the fat sheep, the Lustral, sacrifices toward the beginning of dusk! Let water wet the ground beforehand, and let a green branch sweep the ground; let the sheep-things be adorned with foliage garlands and branches having been fastened to them, and let the long garlands veil the decorated doors. Let the blue-black smoke be created from pure sulfur and let the sheep, having been touched with the smoking sulfur, bleat.
741 Burn the male olives, and the pine-torch, and the Sabine herbs! And the laurel, having been burned in the middle of the hearth, creaks; and let a basket of millet follow cakes made from millet: the rural goddess is particularly pleased by this food. And bring a milk pail to her sacrificial feasts! And with the sacrificial dinner cut up, invoke Sylvan Pales with tepid milk! Say: “By the consul for the herd and equally by the commander of the herd: let mischief, rejected from my stables, run away. If I have pastured my flock in a sacred place or if I have loitered beneath a sacred tree, and a sheep has grazed ignorant fodder from gravesites, if I have entered a forbidden woody-grove, or if there were nymphs, and the half-goat god, that were chased away by our eyes: if my pruning hook has stripped the sacred grove of shady boughs (from which a little basket of foliage had been given to a sick sheep): Make atonement for my crime! I will come inside when it might hail violently, let it not hinder me to drive my herd into a rustic temple; let it not do harm to have disturbed the ponds. Forgive, nymphs, the hoof in motion, which made the water dark! You, goddess, appease the springs and spring-divinities for us! You calm the Gods scattered through every grove! Let us see neither dryads, nor the baths of Diana; nor Faunus, when he lies in the fields in the middle of the day.
763 “Keep disease of the skin far away! Let both the men and the flock be healthy and let the vigilant watch-dogs, the cautious crowd, be healthy. Let me drive back the multitude, not less than there were in the morning, and let me, carrying the fleece snatched by the wolf, not cry. Let injurious hunger be absent: and let the herbs and the foliage remain; and let each water wash the limbs and let each water be drunk. Let me milk the full udders, let the cheese repay me in the form of copper coins, and let the loose woven basket yield the way to flowing whey. And let the ram be lustful and let his mate deliver their offspring, having been conceived, and let there be many a lamb in my stable. And let the wool be produced, let an injury happen to no slave-girls, and be ever so suitably soft to delicate hands. I invoke that which might happen, and we will prepare a large cake for the coming year for Pales, for the mistress of shepherds.”
777 It is by these things that the goddess must be soothed: you, turned around, say these things to the East four times, and wash your hands with living dew! Then, it is lawful. With the wine-cup placed just like you would with a krater, drink the snow-white milk and purple must! Afterwards, through the glowing heaps of crackling straw, you might throw nimble limbs with a quick foot.
783 The custom has been explained: the origin of the custom is left to me: disorder creates a doubtful thing and restrains our undertakings. The voracious fire cleanses everything and the defects melt out from the metals: for that reason the sheep atones for the leader.
787 Or, because the seeds of all things are opposite, like the two discordant gods, fire and water: did the elements unite the ancestors? and did they cleanse the appropriate thing with fires? and did they think to touch the body with spattered water? Or, do they think these two things to be important because in these things there is the cause of life? because the exile has lost these things? because the new wife is created by these things?
793 Indeed, I scarcely believe it: there are those who may believe those things are to be reported as reference to Phaethon and the flood-waters beyond measure of Deucalion. A part, too, believe it to reference when the shepherds were striking rocks with rocks: they cause a sparklet to have sprung forth suddenly; certainly the first one vanished, the second one, having been captured, is on the stalks: does the flame of the Parilia involve this evidence? Or did Aenean religiousness perform this custom more completely, did the fire give an unharmed journey to him, the conquered one? Can it be yet nearer in truth that when Rome has been founded the Lares have been ordered to be transferred into new homes, and while moving, they are to have set their home-place, with rustic abodes of cottages about to be neglected, on fire; is the livestock to have jumped, are the husbandmen to have jumped through the blazing fires? Which is even now performed in the same way for your birthday, Rome.
807 This very place creates subjects for a poet, the birthday of the city has arrived! Attend, Great Quirinus, with your deeds! At this time the brother of Numitor had suffered punishments, and all of the shepherds were a flock under the twin leader. And it is arranged for the country people to assemble, and to build the city walls for either of the two leaders: it is disputed, either twin might establish the city walls.
813 “A task in any kind of competition is nonsense,” Romulus said. “The reliability of bird-omens is good, let us put the birds to the test.” The act is acceptable: one approaches the stones of the forested Palatine, the other arrives early in the morning at the peak of the Aventine. Six are seen by Remus; Romulus sees twice six birds in a row, he adheres to their pact, and Romulus has the authority of the city. The appropriate day is chosen, on which the walls might be marked out with a plough. The festivals of Pales were due to arrive: then, the work is undertaken. The trench is made down to the solid bedrock, crops are thrown into the bottom and so is earth procured from neighboring soil. The trench is refilled with soil, and an altar is placed on the full ditch, and the new hearth is completed by an attendant with fire. Next, Romulus, pressing the plough shaft, marks out the walls with a ceremonial furrow; a white cow with a snowy ox carried the plough-yoke, this was the speech of the king: “Jupiter! Be present at the founding, in the city! And you, too, Father Mavors and Mother Venus! And it is natural to summon those gods. Pay attention, all of you! Let the task emerge for the augurs, for you all, for this, for me. Let lifetime of this mistress be long, and let the power of the earth, and the rising day and the setting day be subject to her.” He was praying, and Jupiter has given omens with favorable thunder, and lightning sent from the favorable pole. The happy citizens lay the foundations according to the omen and, in a short time, there is a new city wall. Celer urges the work for this, who Romulus himself had called upon and had said: “Celer, let that very thing be your worry! And do not let one who either scales the walls or pours out of the constructed trench pass by: deliver the one who dares to do such things to a violent death!”
841 Because Remus, being ignorant of what was said, begins to insult the short walls, he starts to say: “By these the community will be safe?” With no delay, he jumped over them. Celer took the daring one by surprise with a shovel; he, blood-stained, presses into the hard earth. When the King learned these things, he repressed his tears, which have risen internally, and he keeps the wound enclosed in his chest. He did not want to lament the shovel, and he observes the powerful precedent, and he says: “May an enemy similarly pass over my walls.” Nevertheless, he gives a funeral procession, and now he does not endure to suspend his weeping, and his concealed love is exposed; and he placed his final kisses on the arranged bier, and then he says: “Brother, in unwilling deprivation, be well!” He has anointed the limbs that are about to be burned; they act as he did, Faustus and Acca, her mournful hair having been untied. Then, the Quirites, not yet created, wept for the young man; the flame, applied underneath, is the end for the funeral pyre they grieved for. The city, about to be built, emerges as the conqueror, her foot on the known-lands (back then who might be able to confide to anyone about this?) May you command all things, and please, always be under the rule of Great Caesar! Indeed, often keep a great number of this name! And, as often as you might stand firm on the subdued world, everything might be lower than your position.