Amores III.13

Since she I wed was sprung from the fruit-bearing Faliscan town, it chanced we came to the walls brought low, Camillus, by thee. The priestesses were making ready chaste festival to Juno, with solemn games and a cow of native stock; 'twas well worth while to tarry and learn the rites, though the way thither is a toilsome road with steep ascents.

There stands an ancient sacred grove, all dark with shadows from dense trees; behold it — you would agree a deity indwelt the place. An altar receives the prayers and votive incense of the faithful — an artless altar, upbuilt by hands of old. From here, when the pipe has sounded forth in solemn strain, advances over carpeted ways the annual pomp; snowy heifers are led along mid the plaudits of the crowd, heifers reared in their native meadows of Faliscan grass, and calves that threaten with brow not yet to be feared, and, lesser victim, a pig from the lowly sty, and the leader of the flock, with hard temples overhung by the curving horn. The she-goat only is hateful to the mistress-deity; through her tale-telling, they say, the goddess was found in the deep forest and made to cease the flight she had entered on. Now, even children assail the tattler with their darts, and she herself is prize to whoever deals the wound.

Wherever the goddess will pass, youths and timid maidens go before, sweeping the broad ways with trailing robe. The maidens' locks are pressed by gold and gems, and the proud palla covers feet that are bright with gold; in the manner of their Grecian sires of yore, veiled in white vestments they bear on their heads the sacred offerings of old. The crowd keep reverent silence as the golden pomp comes on, with the goddess' self close in the wake of her ministers.

From Argos is the form of the pomp; when Agamemnon fell, Halaesus left behind both the crime and the riches of his fatherland, and after wandering an exile over land and sea founded with auspicious hand these lofty walls. 'Twas he who taught his Faliscans the holy rites of Juno. Ever friendly to me, and ever to their folk, may those rites be.