29.6
When, accordingly, they beheld it, they sallied forth at once in great haste, and because of their haste calling upon one another many times at the gates. They fell upon their enemies when they least expected it and mastered them, and now celebrate this festival in memory of their victory. And the Nones on which it falls are called Capratine from the wild fig-tree, the Roman name for which is caprificus, and they feast the women outside the city in booths made of fig-tree boughs. Then the serving-maids run about in companies and play, after which they strike and throw stones at one another, in token that on that earlier day they assisted the Romans and shared with them in their battle. Cf. Camillus, xxxiii.
29.7
These details are accepted by many historians, but their calling out one another’s names in the day time, and their marching out to the Goat’s Marsh as for sacrifice, seem to be more consonant with the former story, unless, to be sure, both actions happened to take place on the same day in different periods. Romulus is said to have been fifty-four years of age, and in the thirty-eighth year of his reign when he disappeared from among men.
