Look you, how to shining altars
Goes the consecrated lamb,
While a white-robed crowd attendeth,
All their locks with olive bound."
The next few lines seem to contain the prayer, which in its simplicity has at least all the appearance of being imitated, so far as elegiac metre and classical Latin would allow, from the old hymns.
"Gods ancestral, we are purging
Fields and country-folk together;
Drive ye mischief from our confines;
Let no crop with shoots deceptive
Mock the harvest, nor the slow lamb
Fly the bounding wolves in fear."
The prayer is over, and the worshippers, confident in their due performance of the rites, may now enjoy their domestic amusements.
"Blithely, then, for full fields trustful,
Let the countryman pile up
On the blazing hearth the big logs,
While a crowd of household slaves,
Goodly marks of thriving farmers,
Dance and build of twigs toy-houses."[1]
The rest of the poem is modern enough in thought and sentiment, at one moment smacking of the Horatian wine-jar, at another recalling Lucretian theories of social progress.
The legendary origin of the Ambarvalia was that Acca Laurentia, foster-mother of Romulus, had twelve sons, with whom once every year she sacrificed for the fields. On the death of one of these sons, Romulus took his place, it was said, and with his eleven foster-brothers constituted the first college of the Fratres Arvales. At the yearly festival, which took place in May, the members of the college wore, as a sign of their priestly rank, crowns
- ↑ Tibullus, El. II. i.; for last line translated, cf. Hor., Sat. II. iii. 247, ædificare casas.
