The conjecture that once a year a horse may have been sacrificed in
the Arician grove as a representative of the deity of the grove
derives some support from the similar sacrifice of a horse which
took place once a year at Rome. On the fifteenth of October in each
year a chariot-race was run on the Field of Mars. Stabbed with a
spear, the right-hand horse of the victorious team was then
sacrificed to Mars for the purpose of ensuring good crops, and its
head was cut off and adorned with a string of loaves. Thereupon the
inhabitants of two wards--the Sacred Way and the Subura--contended
with each other who should get the head. If the people of the Sacred
Way got it, they fastened it to a wall of the king's house; if the
people of the Subura got it, they fastened it to the Mamilian tower.
The horse's tail was cut off and carried to the king's house with
such speed that the blood dripped on the hearth of the house.
Further, it appears that the blood of the horse was caught and
preserved till the twenty-first of April, when the Vestal Virgins
mixed it with the blood of the unborn calves which had been
sacrificed six days before.
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