XIII. Kal. 19th
When the third morn shall have risen after the disappearance of the Hyades, the horses will be in the Circus, each team in its separate stall. I must therefore explain the reason why foxes are let loose with torches tied to their burning backs. The land of Carseoli is cold and not suited for the growth of olives, but the soil is well adapted for corn. By it I journeyed on my way to the Pelignian land, my native country, a country small but always moist with never-failing water. There I entered, as usual, the house of an old host; Phoebus had already unyoked his spent steeds. My host was wont to tell me many things, and among them matters which were to be embodied in my present work. “In yonder plain,” said he, and he pointed it out, “a thrifty countrywoman had a small croft, she and her sturdy spouse. He tilled his own land, whether the work called for the plough, or the curved sickle, or the hoe. She would now sweep the cottage, supported on props; now she would set the eggs to be hatched under the plumage of the brooding hen; or she gathered green mallows or white mushrooms, or warmed the low hearth with welcome fire.
And yet she diligently employed her hands at the loom, and armed herself against the threats of winter. She had a son, in childhood frolicsome, who now had seen twice five years and two more. He in a valley at the end of a willow copse caught a vixen fox which had carried off many farmyard fowls. The captive brute he wrapped in straw and hay, and set a light to her; she escaped the hands that would have burned her. Where she fled, she set fire to the crops that clothed the fields, and a breeze fanned the devouring flames. The incident is forgotten, but a memorial of it survives; for to this day a certain law of Carseoli forbids to name a fox; and to punish the species a fox is burned at the festival of Ceres, thus perishing itself in the way it destroyed the crops.”
XII. Kal. 20th
When next day Memnon’s saffron-robed mother on her rosy steeds shall come to view the far-spread lands, the sun departs from the sign of the leader of the woolly flock, the ram which betrayed Helle; and when he has passed out of that sign, a larger victim meets him. Whether that victim is a cow or a bull, it is not easy to know; the fore part is visible, the hinder part is hid. But whether the sign be a bull or a cow, it enjoys this reward of love against the will of Juno.
Cite This Text