suovetaurilia

A little behind the Column of Phocas are the marble slabs commemorating the sacrifices called Suovetaurilia, consisting of a pig, a sheep, and an ox, animals which are sculptured here in bold relief.

One of the finest remains in the Forum is the marble relief which represents the suovetaurilia, the sow, sheep, and bull sacrificed on this occasion.

From that point of view the nearest approach, as I hold, to a right solution is set out in a paper by Paul Wolters, in Archiv f�r das Studium der neueren Sprachen, Band xx, Heft 1/2: Braunschweig; though I think he is too positive in ruling out Roman representations of the Suovetaurilia such as the fine urn at Holland House suggested as Keats’s source by the late Mr A. S. Murray and reproduced in The Odes of Keats, by A. C. Downer, M.A.

Suovetaurilia Urn, at Holland House, as possible inspiration to Keats, 416 n.

In the account of the census and lustrum in the Campus Martius given by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who passed some years in Rome in the time of Augustus, we find the suovetaurilia driven three times round the assembled host and sacrificed to Mars.