Aspera Robigo, parcas Cerialibus herbis, Et tremat in summa leve cacumen humo.
Tu sata sideribus caeli nutrita secundi Crescere, dum fiant falcibus apta, sinas.
Parce, precor, scabrasque manus a messibus aufer, Neve noce cultis: posse nocere sat est, &c.
Ovid then asked the flamen why a dog—_nova victima_—was sacrificed, and was told that the dangerous Dog-star was in the ascendant[320]:
Est Canis, Icarium dicunt, quo sidere moto Tosta sitit tellus, praecipiturque seges. Pro cane sidereo canis hic imponitur arae, Et quare pereat, nil nisi nomen habet.
In this, however, both he and the priest were certainly mistaken. Sirius does not rise, but disappears on April 25, at sunset; and it is almost certain that the sacrifice of the dog had nothing to do with the star. The real meaning of the choice of victim was unknown both to priest and poet: but modern research has made a reasonable attempt to recover it[321].
We are told[322] of a sacrifice of reddish sucking whelps, and of augury made from their _exta_, which must have been closely connected with the Robigalia, if not (in later times at least) identified with it. Originally it was not on a fixed day, as is proved by an extract from the _commentarii pontificum_ quoted by Pliny[323]; but it is quite possible that for convenience, as the religio of the urbs got more and more dissociated from the agriculture in which it had its origin, the date was fixed for April 25—the rites of the Robigalia being of the same kind, and the date suitable. The whelps were red or reddish; and from the language of Festus, quoting Ateius Capito, we gather that this colour was supposed to resemble that of the corn when ripe: ‘Rufae canes immolabantur, ut fruges _flavescentes_ ad maturitatem perducerentur’ (p. 285). We should indeed naturally have expected that the rufous colour was thought to resemble the red mildew, as Mannhardt explains it[324]; but we do not know for certain that these puppies were offered to Robigus. In any case, however, we may perhaps see in them an animal representation of the corn, and in the rite a piece of ‘sympathetic magic’[325], the object of which was to bring the corn to its golden perfection, or to keep off the robigo, or both. If we knew more about the dog-offering at the grove of Robigus, we might find that it too, if not indeed identical with the _augurium_, had a similar intention.