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VER SACRUM
Form: a sacred spring.
A dedication practised by the Italian tribes, whereby, in times of severe hardship, all the products of the succeeding spring, i.e. the months of March and April, were conserated to the gods. All the fruits and cattle were actually offered up in sacrifice; while the children that were then born, as soon as they were grown up, were driven out of the country as forfeited to heaven, and required to seek a new home. Whole generations in this way left their country, those of the Sabine stock being led by the animals sacred to Mars-a bull, a woodpecker, or a wolf. In Rome, whose origin is traced back by many to a ver sacrum, the pontifices superintended the vow and its fulfilment. The ver sacrum was vowed for the last time in the econd Punic War. [B.C. 217, Livy xxii 10; but the vow was not fulfilled until twenty-one years afterwards, B.C. 195 and 194, ib. xxxiii 44 and xxxiv 44].
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gutter splint
gutter splint
gutter splint