Читать книгу Rambles in Rome - S. Russell Forbes - Страница 91

Upon the inner sides of the Avenue are represented on each balustrade a boar, a ram, and a bull—the animals offered at the triple sacrifice, or suovetaurilia (from sus, ovis, taurus), which was performed once every five years, or lustrum, for the purification of the city.

It was an institution of Servius Tullius, the ceremony consisting in leading the boar, ram, and bull thrice round the assembly of the people, and then offering them to Mars. There is a similar representation upon a relief of Trajan on the Arch of Constantine, and upon a pedestal found near the Arch of Septimius Severus.

To our left of the Arch of Severus is