901 When the days of April will have six which remain, the season of Spring will be in the middle of its journey, and you will search in vain for the Ram of Helle, daughter of Athamas. And rain showers present the constellations and the Dog comes into view.
905 At this time I was in Nomentum; as I was returning to Rome with the daylight, a bright white crowd blocked the way in the middle of the road. A priest was going into the sacred grove of primeval Robigo, about to give the organs of a dog, the organs of a sheep to the flames. At once, I approached the crowd (let me be not ignorant of the rites): your priest has declared these words, Quirinus: “May you spare the rough surfaces, Robigo, on the plants of Ceres, and may the smooth young shoot quiver on top of the soil. May you leave the crops, tended by the propitious constellations of the the sky, to grow until they might be ready for the scythes. Your strength is not small: The unhappy farmer has those crops which you have branded, among his lost things; neither have winds nor rainstorms damaged so much for Ceres, nor do burns, pale with marble-white frost, so damage the crops to the extent that Titan does if he heats the soaked stems: in that event, it is the place of your wrath, goddess who must be feared. Be merciful! I implore you, and withdraw your scabbed hands from the harvest, nor do harm to the cultivated things! There is enough for you to be able to harm: do not grip the fragile crops, but rather seize a hard sword, and you, the earlier, destroy that which is able to ruin others! Seize the effective sword and guilty spear! In no respect is there work with those: the universe celebrate leisure. Now, let the hoes and stubborn two-pronged hoe and the curved plough-share, the resources of the countryside, shine: let Robigo defile the arms of the region, and let a presuming someone, intending to take a sword, bound to the sheath, be affected by a long delay! But you do not injure Ceres! And may a farmer always be able to duly perform his vows to a more-absent you.” He had spoken; from his right hand, he took a hand towel, with the nap of its cloth loose in structure, and with a broad, shallow libation dish of pure wine there was a box of frankincense. He gives the frankincense drops and the wine to the hearth and the entrails of a sheep, and (we have witnessed him) the loathsome organs of a polluted dog. Then, to me: “Why might a strange sacrifice be given to the divine ones, you ask?” (I had asked.)
938 “Understand the reason!” the priest says. “There is the Dog, they say the dog of Icarius, during the time in which that constellation has been put in motion to set, the scorched ground is in need of water, and the crops are premature. This dog is placed on the altar because of the constellation Dog, and therefore he might die, for no reason other than the name he has.”