Note 1388 — Chapter VII · THE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS OF ROME AND THE INCORPORATION OF ITALY

Polyb. iii. 25; Liv. i. 24. Yet the ceremonies they describe are different. In that related by Polybius the stone has a passive signification; the priest hurls it from him and prays, “May I only be cast out, if I break my oath, as this stone is now.” In that described by Livy, “the pig represents the perjurer, the flint-knife the instrument of divine vengeance” (Strachan-Davidson’s Polybius, Proleg. viii.), and Jupiter is here to strike the people that fails in the compact. Possibly the two forms of ritual were used in different kinds of treaties; the first, perhaps, in commercial compacts, the second in agreements that closed a war.