making which their centre, they described the city in a circle
round it. Then the founder fitted to a plough, a bronze
ploughshare, and, yoking together a bull and a cow, drove himself
a deep line or furrow round the bounds; while the business of
those that followed after was to see that whatever earth was
thrown up should be turned all inwards towards the city, and not
to let any clod lie outside. With this line they described the
wall, and called it, by a contradiction, Pomoerium, that is, "post
murum," after or beside the wall; and where they designed to make
a gate, there they took out the share, carried the plough over,
and left a space; for which reason they consider the whole wall as
holy, except where the gates are; for had they adjudged them also
sacred, they could not, without offence to religion, have given
free ingress and egress for the necessaries of human life, some of
which are in themselves unclean.

As for the day they began to build the city, it is universally
agreed to have been the twenty-first of April, and that day the
Romans annually keep holy, calling it their country's birthday. At
first, they say, they sacrificed no living creatures on this day,
thinking it fit to preserve the feast of their country's birthday
pure and without stain of blood. Yet before ever the city was
built, there was a feast of herdsmen and shepherds kept on this
day, which went by the name of Palilia. The Roman and Greek months
have now little or no agreement; they say, however, the day on
which Romulus began to build was quite certainly the thirtieth of
the month, at which time there was an eclipse of the sun which
they conceive to be that seen by Antimachus, the Teian poet, in
the third year of the sixth Olympiad. In the times of Varro the
philosopher, a man deeply read in Roman history, lived one