Plut. Mor., Greek and Roman Parallels 35 — Parallels, or a comparison between the Greek and Roman Histories

Plut. Mor., Greek and Roman Parallels 35 — Parallels, or a comparison between the Greek and Roman Histories, Plutarch; served verbatim

In the time of a great plague in Lacedaemon, they were told by the oracle, that the pestilence would cease upon the sacrificing of a noble virgin every year. It fell one time by lot to Helena, who was brought out and dressed up ready for the sacrifice. An eagle at that time flying by took away the sword, and carrying it into a herd of cattle laid it down upon a heifer; whereupon they spared the virgin.—Aristodemus, in his Third Collection of Fables. There was a dreadful plague in Falerii, which the oracle said would be removed upon the sacrificing of a virgin to Juno every year. While this superstition was in course, it fell to Valeria Luperca’s lot to be the sacrifice. An eagle flew away with the drawn sword, but laid a stick upon the fuel prepared for the fire, with a little mallet fixed to it. The sword he threw upon a heifer feeding near the temple. The virgin perceiving this sacrificed the heifer; and taking up the mallet, went about from house to house, and with a gentle knock called to those that were sick, bidding them be of good health. And this was the rise of the ceremony which continues to this day. —Aristides, in his Nineteenth Book of Italian Histories.

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

← Plut. Mor., Greek and Roman Parallels 34 contents Plut. Mor., Greek and Roman Parallels 36 →

Filed here — the addresses this episode attests; counted by the house’s first pass

Aristides — a life Aristodemus — a candidate entry

Parallels, or a comparison between the Greek and Roman Histories, Plutarch — translated by John Oswald (rev. W. W. Goodwin), 1874
Apparatus shelf + pinned Perseus TEI — Plutarch's Morals (the Moralia), ed. William W. Goodwin, five volumes · 'Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin, Ph. D.', with an introduction by R. W. Emerson; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1874 (five volumes; a minority of the TEI transcriptions were keyed from the same publisher's 1878 reprint)
license: public-domain (US: the Goodwin edition is an 1874 Boston publication of a 1684-1694 translation — title pages verified on all five shelf scans at acquisition; Perseus digital editions CC BY-SA 4.0, attribution recorded per ops/corpus-staging/SOURCES.md pattern)