LIBER XIV · CAPUT 12
THE INSPECTION OF WINE ORDERED BY KING ROMULUS
Latine · Mayhoff 1906
Romulum lacte, non vino, libasse indicio sunt sacra ab eo instituta, quae hodie custodiunt morem. Numae regis Postumia lex est: Vino rogum ne respargito. quod sanxisse illum propter inopiam rei nemo dubitet. eadem lege ex inputata vite libari vina diis nefas statuit, ratione excogitata ut putare cogerentur alias aratores et pigri circa pericula arbusti. M. Varro auctor est Mezentium Etruriae regem auxilium Rutulis contra Latinos tulisse vini mercede quod tum in Latino agro fuisset.
English · Bostock & Riley 1855–57
Romulus made libations, not with wine but with milk; a fact which is fully established by the religious rites which owe their foundation to him, and are observed even to the present day. The Posthumian Law, promulgated by King Numa, has an injunction to the following effect:—“Sprinkle not the funeral pyre with wine;” a law to which he gave his sanction, no doubt, in consequence of the remarkable scarcity of that commodity in those days. By the same law, he also pronounced it illegal to make a libation to the gods of wine that was the produce of an unpruned vine, his object being to compel the husbandmen to prune their vines; a duty which they showed themselves reluctant to perform, in consequence of the danger which attended climbing the trees. M. Varro informs us, that Mezentius, the king of Etruria, succoured the Rutuli against the Latini, upon condition that he should receive all the wine that was then in the territory of Latium.