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[4] Now the Salii were so named, not, as some tell the tale, from a man of Samothrace or Mantinea, named Salius, who first taught the dance in armour; but rather from the leaping 1 which characterized the dance itself. This dance they perform when they carry the sacred bucklers through the streets of the city in the month of March, clad in purple tunics, girt with broad belts of bronze, wearing bronze helmets on their heads, and carrying small daggers with which they strike the shields.

1 The Latin ‘salire,’ to leap.

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