On Feb. 15 the celebrants of this ancient rite met at the cave called the Lupercal, at the foot of the steep south-western corner of the Palatine Hill—the spot where, according to the tradition, the flooded Tiber had deposited the twin children at the foot of the sacred fig-tree[1388], and where they were nourished by the she-wolf. The name of the cave is almost without doubt built up from _lupus_, ‘a wolf’[1389]; but we cannot be equally sure whether the name of the festival is derived directly from Lupercal, or on the analogy of Quirinalia, Volcanalia, and others, from Lupercus, the alleged name of the deity concerned in the rites, and also of the celebrants themselves[1390]. In any case we are fairly justified in calling this the wolf-festival; the more so as the wolf was the sacred animal of Mars, who was in a special sense the god of the earliest settlers on the Palatine[1391]. The first act of the festival seems to have been the sacrifice of goats (we are not told how many), and of a dog[1392]; and at the same time were offered sacred cakes made by the Vestals, from the first ears of last year’s harvest. This was the last batch of the _mola salsa_, some of which had been used at the Vestalia in June, and some on the Ides of September[1393]. Next, two youths of high rank, belonging, we may suppose, one to each of the two collegia of Luperci (of which more directly), were brought forward; these had their foreheads smeared with the knife bloody from the slaughter of the victims, and then wiped with wool dipped in milk. As soon as this was done they were obliged to laugh. Then they girt themselves with the skins of the slaughtered goats, and feasted luxuriously[1394]; after which they ran round the base of the Palatine Hill, or at least a large part of its circuit, apparently in two companies, one led by each of the two youths. As they ran they struck at all the women who came near them or offered themselves to their blows, with strips of skin cut from the hides of the same victims; which strips, as we have seen, were among the objects which were called by the priests _februa_.