(M145) Among the ancient Italian peoples, especially of the Sabine stock, it was customary in seasons of great peril or public calamity, as when the crops had failed or a pestilence was raging, to vow that they would sacrifice to the gods every creature, whether man or beast, that should be born in the following spring. To the creatures thus devoted to sacrifice the name of “the sacred spring” was applied. “But since,” says Festus, “it seemed cruel to slay innocent boys and girls, they were kept till they had grown up, then veiled and driven beyond the boundaries.”(500) Several Italian peoples, for example the Piceni, Samnites, and Hirpini, traced their origin to a “sacred spring,” that is, to the consecrated youth who had swarmed off from the parent stock in consequence of such a vow.(501) When the Romans were engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Hannibal after their great defeat at the Trasimene Lake, they vowed to offer a “sacred spring” if victory should attend their arms and the commonwealth should retrieve its shattered fortunes. But the vow extended only to all the offspring of sheep, goats, oxen, and swine that should be brought forth on Italian mountains, plains, and meadows the following spring.(502) On a later occasion, when the Romans pledged themselves again by a similar vow, it was decided that by the “sacred spring” should be meant all the cattle born between the first day of March and the last day of April.(503) Although in later times the Italian peoples appear to have resorted to measures of this sort only in special emergencies, there was a tradition that in former times the consecration of the firstborn to the gods had been an annual custom.(504) Accordingly, it seems not impossible that originally the Italians may, like the Hebrews and perhaps the Semites in general, have been in the habit of dedicating all the firstborn, whether of man or beast, and sacrificing them at a great festival in spring.(505) The custom of the “sacred spring” was not confined to the Italians, but was practised by many other peoples, both Greeks and barbarians, in antiquity.(506)