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But it is possible that, at this stage of the history of the censorship, penalties could be inflicted upon the members of all classes at any date preceding the lustral sacrifice, that the usual examination of the citizen body had been completed, and that Gracchus appeared alone before the tribunal of the censors. His defence became famous; its result is unknown.

She was the Goddess of Water. Of this Forlong says: "Water, perhaps more than fire, has always been used as a purifier... . Christians have but imitated the ancients, in the use of Lustral water now-a-days called Holy Water, and into which salt should be freely put."

This merry festival was over and gone, and the canal was all brimming with the lustral renewal of its waters, its depths flashing now and again with the passage of wary survivors of that spring battue.

Clad in magnificent vestments, they move to solemn measures about it; they ascend and descend the steps that lead to it; they offer sacrifices upon it; they carry in their hands lighted torches; they pour out lustral water; they burn incense; they divide into antiphonal bands, and sing alternate stanzas of their sacred songs.

He remained to burn lustral fires in the temple; the people withdrew to their houses to escape pollution, and the priestess with her victims reached the seaside in safety. Once there, with the sacred image which was to bring them good fortune, they hastened to the Grecian galley and put off from that desolate shore.

It is true, however, that he would have, at the same time, to solve the mighty enigma for whose word we are all of us seeking, so that this supposition is not likely to be realised very soon. This is the source, then, whence the lustral water is drawn with which the poets have purified the cruellest of tragedies.

"Come, brother," I said, "our fortunes must needs mend since they can never be more broken. In this world there is no stay, but a thing gets better or worse. I believe we may be happy yet." "Brother," replied Belviso, "I am sure of it, and I promise you I have never looked forward to happiness before. This well in which I have washed myself is lustral water.

As this general tax upon industry was collected every fourth year, it was styled the Lustral Contribution: and the historian Zosimus laments that the approach of the fatal period was announced by the tears and terrors of the citizens, who were often compelled by the impending scourge to embrace the most abhorred and unnatural methods of procuring the sum at which their property had been assessed.

The superstitious man, according to him, after having washed his hands with lustral water that is, water in which a torch from the altar had been quenched goes about with a laurel-leaf in his mouth, to keep off evil influences, as the pigs in Devonshire used, in my youth, to go about with a withe of mountain ash round their necks to keep off the evil eye.

God had appointed water of expiation to be used by the Jews, Numbers XIX. Lustral water used to be sprinkled also by the Pagans; Terque senem flamma, ter aqua, ter sulphure purget. Ov. Met. l. 7. Anastasius says that Alexander I, who was Pope in 108 "appointed that water for sprinkling should be blessed with salt in private houses." It is mentioned also in the apostolic constitutions.