Note 120 — LECTURE VI LUSTRATIO

This is my own inference from the language of Cato in chapters 83 and 141. When the cattle are in the forest, there is a special formula of prayer for them: see ch. 83. The word ager could hardly, I think, be taken as including the woodland in which the flocks fed in summer; and in May, when the lustratio agri took place, they would be already off the winter pasture. In the formula for this lustratio (141) Cato does include the pastores and pecua; but they are not the most conspicuous objects of the prayer, and I am inclined to think that they are mentioned only as belonging to the farm, though not at the moment within its sacred boundary.