of
Caesaraugusta, now
Zaragoza in
Spain, honoring
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa According to surviving classical sources, the needed to occur on an
auspicious day of the
Roman calendar, further confirmed by
augury or similar consultation of
omens. The magistrate or other official in charge of the ceremony personally set a
bronze plowshare on a wooden
ard, which was then attached to a
yoked pair of
cattle. All literary sources state that the team should consist of a
cow on the left and a
bull on the right, driven counterclockwise so that the cow was to the inside and the bull to outside, although surviving
numismatic evidence appears to show only bulls or standard
oxen instead. The ritual was solemn enough that it needed to be performed wearing a
toga and with covered head () but, as it required the use of both hands, the magistrate's toga was worn wrapped tightly and cinched in
Gabine style. All of the clods of earth raised by the plow were supposed to fall to the inside, which was accomplished by keeping the plow crooked which required that the plow be lifted across the locations of the future city gates so that it would be religiously permissible to enter and leave the town, The cattle were sacrificed at the end of the procedure. The city wall was subsequently raised over the earth beside the furrow, meaning that it was presumably included among the sections on the founding of cities in the now-lost Books of Ritual (). For the Romans, the was the essential establishment of a city In like manner, plows were used to
deconsecrate walls, undoing any former ritual and removing any religious stigma from their destruction. ==Rome==