shield, he said,
came for the salvation of the city, and they must guard it, and make
eleven more like it, so that no thief could steal the one that fell from
heaven, because he could not tell which it was. Moreover the place and
the meadows round about it, where he was wont to converse with the
Muses, must be consecrated to them, and the well by which it was watered
must be pointed out as holy water to the vestal virgins, that they might
daily take some thence to purify and sprinkle their temple. The truth
of this is said to have been proved by the immediate cessation of the
plague. He bade workmen compete in imitating the shield, and, when all
others refused to attempt it, Veturius Mamurius, one of the best workmen
of the time, produced so admirable an imitation, and made all the
shields so exactly alike, that even Numa himself could not tell which
was the original. He next appointed the Salii to guard and keep them.
These priests were called Salii, not, as some say, after a man of
Samothrace or of Mantinea named Salius, who first taught the art of
dancing under arms, but rather from the springing dance itself, which
they dance through the city when they carry out the shields in the month
of March, dressed in scarlet tunics, girt with brazen girdles, with
brazen helmets on their heads and little daggers with which they strike
the shields. The rest of their dance is done with their feet; they move
gracefully, whirling round, swiftly and airily counter-changing their
positions with light and vigorous motions according to rhythm and
measure. The shields are called _ancilia_, because of their shape; for
they are not round, nor with a perfect circumference, but are cut out of
a wavy line, and curl in at the thickest part towards each other; or
they may be called _ancilia_ after the name of the elbow, _ankon_, on
which they are carried; at least so Juba conjectures in his endeavours
to find a Greek derivation for the word. The name may be connected with
the fall of the shield _from above_ (_anekathen_), or with the healing
(_akesis_) of the plague, and the cessation of that terrible calamity,
if we must refer the word to a Greek root.

It is related that, to reward Mamurius for his workmanship, his name is
mentioned in the song which the Salii sing while they dance their
Pyrrhic dance; others, however, say that it is not Veturium Mamurium
that they say, but _Veterem Memoriam_, which means ancient memory.

XIV. After he had