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Why do they regard all the city wall as inviolable and sacred, but not the gates?
Is it, as Varro has written, because the wall must
be considered sacred that men may fight and die
with enthusiasm in its defence? It was under such
circumstances, it seems, that Romulus killed his
brother because he was attempting to leap across a
place that was inviolable and sacred, and to make it
traversable and profane.
But it was impossible to consecrate the gates, for
through them they carry out many other objectionable things and also dead bodies.1 Wherefore the
original founders of a city yoke a bull and a
cow, and mark out with a plough all the land on
which they intend to build2; and when they are
engaged in tracing3 the circuit of the walls, as they
measure off the space intended for gates, they lift
up the ploughshare and thus carry the plough across,
[p. 51]
since they hold that all the land that is ploughed is
to be kept sacred and inviolable.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. 4.
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