35
There was a dreadful plague in Falerii, which the oracle said would be removed upon the sacrificing of a virgin to Juno every year. While this superstition was in course, it fell to Valeria Luperca’s lot to be the sacrifice. An eagle flew away with the drawn sword, but laid a stick upon the fuel prepared for the fire, with a little mallet fixed to it. The sword he threw upon a heifer feeding near the temple. The virgin perceiving this sacrificed the heifer; and taking up the mallet, went about from house to house, and with a gentle knock called to those that were sick, bidding them be of good health. And this was the rise of the ceremony which continues to this day. —Aristides, in his Nineteenth Book of Italian Histories.
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Philonome, the daughter of Nyctimus and Arcadia, went many times to the chase with Diana. Mars lay with her in the shape of a shepherd, and fetched up her belly. She was delivered in time of twins, which for fear of her father she threw into the river Erymanthus. By a strange fatality of providence they were driven safe into a hollow oak, which happening to be the kennel of a wolf, this wolf threw her whelps into the river, and suckled the children. Tyliphus a shepherd, that had seen this with his own eyes, took these children and brought them up as his own, calling one of them Lycastus, and the other Parrasius, which reigned successively in Arcadia.—This is reported by Zopyrus Byzantius, in the Third Book of his Histories.
