XV. Kal. 15th
The third morn after the Ides beholds the naked Luperci, and then, too, come the rites of two-horned Faunus. Declare, Pierian Muses, the origin of the rites, and from what quarter they were fetched and reached our Latin homes. The Arcadians of old are said to have worshipped Pan, the god of cattle, him who haunts the Arcadian ridges. Witness Mount Pholoe, witness the Stymphalian waters, and the Ladon that seaward runs with rapid current: witness the ridges of the Nonacrine grove begirt with pinewoods: witness high Cyllene and the Parrhasian snows. There Pan was the deity of herds, and there, too, of mares; he received gifts for keeping safe the sheep. Evander brought with him across the sea his woodland deities; where now the city stands, there was then naught but the city’s site. Hence we worship the god, and the Flamen Dialis still performs in the olden way the rites brought hither by the Pelasgians. You ask, Why then do the Luperci run? and why do they strip themselves and bear their bodies naked, for so it is their wont to run?
The god himself loves to scamper, fleet of foot, about the high mountains, and he himself takes suddenly to flight. The god himself is nude and bids his ministers go nude: besides, raiment sorted not well with running. The Arcadians are said to have possessed their land before the birth of Jove, and that folk is older than the moon. Their life was like that of beasts, unprofitably spent; artless as yet and raw was the common herd. Leaves did they use for houses, herbs for corn: water scooped up in two hollows of the hands to them was nectar. No bull panted under the weight of the bent ploughshare: no land was under the dominion of the husbandman: there was as yet no use for horses, every man carried his own weight: the sheep went clothed in its own wool. Under the open sky they lived and went about naked, inured to heavy showers and rainy winds. Even to this day the unclad ministers recall the memory of the olden custom and attest what comforts the ancients knew.
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