Pr. Id. 14th
The day before the Ides marks the time when the Bull lifts his starry front. This constellation is explained by a familiar tale. Jupiter in the shape of a bull offered his back to the Tyrian maid and wore horns on his false brow. She held the bull’s mane in her right hand, her drapery in her left; and her very fear lent her fresh grace. The breeze fills the robe on her bosom, it stirs her yellow hair; Sidonian damsel, thus indeed it became thee to meet the gaze of Jove. Oft did she withdraw her girlish soles from the sea, and feared the contact of the dashing wave; often the god knowingly plunged his back into the billows, that she might cling the closer to his neck. On reaching the shore, Jupiter stood without any horns, and the bull was turned into the god. The bull passed into the sky: thou, Sidonian damsel, wast got with child by Jupiter, and a third part of the earth doth bear thy name. Others say that this constellation is the Pharian heifer, which from a human being was made a cow, and from a cow was made a goddess.
Then, too, the Virgin is wont to throw the rush-made effigies of ancient men from the oaken bridge. There is an old tradition, that when the land was called Saturnia these words were spoken by soothsaying Jove: “Ye clans, cast into the water of the Tuscan river two bodies as a sacrifice to the Ancient who bears the sickle.” The gloomy rite was performed, so runs the tale, in the Leucadian manner every year, until the Tirynthian hero came to these fields; he cast men of straw into the water, and now dummies are thrown after the example set by Hercules. Some think that the young men used to hurl the feeble old men from the bridges, in order that they themselves alone should have the vote. He who believes that after sixty years men were put to death, accuses our forefathers of a wicked crime. “O Tiber, inform me of the truth: thy bank is older than the city: thou canst well know the origin of the rite.” The Tiber raised his reed-crowned head from the mid channel, and opened his hoarse mouth to utter these words: “These regions I have seen when they were solitary grass-lands without any city walls: scattered kine pastured on either bank; and I, the Tiber, whom the nations now both know and fear, was then a thing to be despised even by cattle.
You often hear mention of the name of Arcadian Evander: he came from far and churned my waters with his oars. Alcides also came, attended by a troop of Greeks. At that time, if I remember aright, my name was Albula. The Pallantian hero received him hospitably; and Cacus got at last the punishment he deserved. The victorious Hercules departed and carried off with him the kine, the booty he had taken from Erythea. But his companions refused to go farther: a great part of them had come from Argos, which they abandoned. On these hills they set their hope and their home; yet were they often touched by the sweet love of their native land, and one of them in dying gave this brief charge: ‘ Throw me into the Tiber, that, borne upon his waves, my empty dust may pass to the Inachian shore.’ His heir disliked the charge of sepulture thus laid on him: the dead stranger was buried in Ausonian ground, and an effigy of rushes was thrown into the Tiber instead of him, that it might return to his Greek home across the waters wide.” Thus far did Tiber speak, then passed into the dripping cave of living rock: ye nimble waters checked your flow.
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