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In the next place, the maid-servants, gaily dressed, run about, playing and jesting upon all they meet, and amongst themselves, also, use a kind of skirmishing, to show they helped in the conflict against the Latins; and while eating and drinking, they sit shaded over with boughs of wild fig-tree, and the day they call Nonae Caprotinae, as some think from that wild fig-tree on which the maid- servant held up her torch, the Roman name for a wild fig-tree being caprificus.
II. Rome had been founded, and Romulus had reigned, for thirty-seven years, when upon the fifth day of the month of July, which day is now called nonae caprotinae, he was performing a public sacrifice outside the gates, at a place called the Goat's Marsh, in the presence of the Senate and most of the people.
As they fell unexpectedly upon the enemy, they routed them, and keep the day as a feast. Therefore the Nones are called Caprotinae because of the fig-tree, which the Romans call caprificus, and the women are feasted out of doors, under the shade of fig-tree boughs.
A temple dedicated to him is built on the Quirinal Hill which bears his name, and the day of his translation is called the People's Flight, and the Nonae Caprotinae, because they go out of the city to the Goat's Marsh on that day to sacrifice, for in Latin a goat is called Capra.
They call this day the nonae caprotinae, probably from the wild fig-tree from which the slave girl waved the torch; for in Latin a wild fig-tree is called caprificus.
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