Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

662 TEEES AND ANIMALS.
indisturbatis equus transibat, signum habuere prosperitatis, et
securi pergebant ; sin autem, quiescebant/ Here the holy steed
is led across nine spears lying a cubit apart from one another, in
Dietmar s older narrative over the points of two crossed spears ;
of course the Luitizers may have had a different method from the
Pomeranians. Saxo Gram. p. 321 gives yet a third account of
the matter respecting the Slavs of Riigen : Praeterea peculiarem
albi coloris equumtitulo possidebat (numen), cujus jubae aut caudae
pilos convellere nefarium ducebatur. Hunc soli sacerdoti pascendi
insidendique jus erat, ne divini animalis usus quo frequentior hoc
vilior haberetur. In hoc equo, opinione Rugiae, Svantovitus (id
simulacro vocabulum erat) adversus sacrorum suorum hostes bella
gerere credebatur. Cujus rei praecipuum argumentum exstabat,
quod is nocturno tempore stabulo insistens adeo plerumque mane
sudore ac luto respersus videbatur, 1
ab exercitatione
tanquam
veniendo magnorum itinerum spacia percurrisset. Auspicia
quoque per eundem equum hujusmodi sumebantur. Cum bellum
adversum aliquam provinciam suscipi placuisset, ante fanum tri
plex liastarum ordo ministrorum opera disponi solebat, in quorum
quolibet binae e traverso junctae conversis in terram cuspidibus
figebantur, aequali spaciorum magnitudine ordines disparante.
Ad quos equus ductandae expeditionis tempore, solenni precatione
praemissa, a sacerdote e vestibulo cum loramentis productus, si
propositos ordines ante dextro quam laevo pede transcenderet,
faustnm gerendi belli omen accipiebatur. Sin laevum vel semel
dextro praetulisset, petendae provinciae propositum mutabatur.
This description is still more exact : the sacred horse, here attri
buted to the deity himself who bestrides him by night, is led
three times over two spears planted crosswise, that is, over six
spears, and must, for the omen to be favourable, pass
each row
with his right foot foremost ; if at even one row he has lifted
the left before the right, misfortune is threatened. The colour
ascribed to the steed is white as in Tacitus, not Hack as in the
biographer of Otto.
The Chronica Augustensis ad. an. 1068 (in Freher 1, 349)
says, that Bp. Burcard of Halberstadt (the
Buko still known in
1 As the horse ridden by the night-spirit is covered with dust and sweat the
next morning (see p. 287 and Suppl.).