His filial piety however; his hereditary courage, his
extensive knowledge, his complicated excellencies, have now, I fear, no
other register to record their worth, than a low stone near the stately
pyramid of Jupiter's caterer.
The tomb of Caecilia Metella, wife of the rich and famous Crassus, claims
our next attention; it is a beautiful structure, and still called _Capo
di Bove_ by the Italians, on account of its being ornamented with the
_oxhead and flowers_ which now flourish over every door in the new-built
streets of London; but the original of which, as Livy tells us, and I
believe Plutarch too, was this. That Coratius, a Sabine farmer, who
possessed a particularly fine cow, was advised by a soothsayer to
sacrifice her to Diana upon the Aventine Hill; telling him, that the
city where _she_ now presided--_Diana_--should become mistress of the
world, and he who presented her with that cow should become master over
that city. The poor Sabine went away to wash in the Tyber, and purify
himself for these approaching honours[AF]; but in the mean time, a boy
having heard the discourse, and reported it to _Servius Tullius_, he
hastened to the spot, killed Coratius's cow for him, sacrificed her to
Diana, and hung her head with the horns on, and the garland just as she
died, upon the temple door as an ornament.
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