We have various forms of prayer surviving in Roman literature: some of them are versified by the poets, and therefore give us a general impression of the contents without the actual and genuine wording; we have also two fragments of ancient _carmina_ which have the form of prayers, those of the Salii and the Fratres Arvales; and we have certain forms used on special occasions, such as the _evocatio_ of the gods of a hostile community, or the formulae of vows (_vota_) which I must postpone to the next lecture. But the only unquestionably genuine old Roman prayers used at sacrifice, taken from the books of the pontifices and preserved word for word, are those which Cato embodied in his treatise on agriculture in the second century B.C., as proper to be used with sacrifice on certain occasions in the agricultural year.[380] It is here that we meet with the phrase, familiar in another form to all Latin scholars, on which I wish to lay stress now. It occurs in all the four forms of prayer which Cato copied down. The first is at the time of the flowering of the pear-trees, on behalf of the oxen: "Iuppiter dapalis, quod tibi fieri oportet in domo familia mea culignam vini dapi eius rei[381] ergo, _macte hac illace dape polucenda esto_." And again, when the wine is offered: "Iuppiter dapalis, _macte istace dape polucenda esto. Macte vino inferio esto_." So in the piacular sacrifice when a clearing is made, the unknown deity is addressed in the last words of the prayer thus: "harum rerum ergo _macte hoc porco piaculo immolando esto_." We find this _macte esto_ again in the prayer for the ceremony of lustratio, at the end of the formula: "_macte hisce suovetaurilibus lactentibus immolandis esto_." In the rite of the _porca praecidanea_, to which I have already referred, the instruction for the invocation of Jupiter runs: "_Fertum_ (_i.e._ a kind of cake) _Iovi obmoveto et mactato sic, Iuppiter, te hoc ferto_ obmovendo bonas preces precor, uti sies volens propitius mihi liberisque meis domo familiaeque meae _mactus hoc ferto_." Janus gets another kind of cake (_strues_) and a wine-offering, and is addressed in the same way. Then we read, "Iovi fertum obmoveto _mactatoque item_, ut prius feceris."