According to
Livy, word had come to Rome of the new and glorious
temple of Artemis at
Ephesus, and it was told that the temple had been constructed through the combined effort of the cities of
Asia Minor. The king of Rome, Servius Tullius, extolled the virtues of such an act of concord to the cities of the
Latins, and convinced them to work with the Roman people to build a temple to
Diana in Rome. The temple was built upon the
Aventine Hill. Soon after the construction of the temple, a cow of remarkable beauty and size was born to the head of a
Sabine family. It was foretold by the
augurs that sovereignty would come to the city whose citizen sacrificed the cow to Diana. Accordingly, the Sabine man took the cow to the temple of Diana in Rome, and led her to the altar. However, before he could sacrifice her, the Roman priest of the temple confronted him, and asked whether he would make the sacrifice with impure hands, imploring the man to go and cleanse his hands in the
Tiber. Once the Sabine had left the temple to go to the Tiber, the priest immediately sacrificed the cow, to the great satisfaction of Rome and its king. If still in use by the 4th-century, it would have been closed during the
persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire. ==Legacy==