27
Is it, as Varro has written, because the wall must be considered sacred that men may fight and die with enthusiasm in its defence? It was under such circumstances, it seems, that Romulus killed his brother because he was attempting to leap across a place that was inviolable and sacred, and to make it traversable and profane.
27
But it was impossible to consecrate the gates, for through them they carry out many other objectionable things and also dead bodies. Cf.Moralia, 518 b. Wherefore the original founders of a city yoke a bull and a cow, and mark out with a plough all the land on which they intend to build Cf. Varro, De Lingua Latina, v. 143, Res Rusticae, ii. 1. 9; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, i. 88; Ovid, Fasti, iv. 819 ff.; and when they are engaged in tracing Cf.Life of Romulus, xi. (23 d). the circuit of the walls, as they measure off the space intended for gates, they lift up the ploughshare and thus carry the plough across, since they hold that all the land that is ploughed is to be kept sacred and inviolable.
28
Why do they tell children, whenever they would swear by Hercules, not to do so under a roof, and bid them go out into the open air? Cf. Varro, De Lingua Latina, v. 66.
28
Is it, as some relate, because they believe that Hercules had no pleasure in staying in the house, but rejoiced in a life in the open air and a bed under the stars?
28
Or is it rather because Hercules is not one of the native gods, but a foreigner from afar? For neither do they swear under a roof by Bacchus, since he also is a foreign god if he is from Nysa.
