Supplicia canum

[10] It lapsed into disuse during the late Republic of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, but was revived during the Imperial period, when people of higher social status were exempt from it.

[11] Binding and striking probably had a religious dimension, present also in other Roman rituals such as the Lupercalia, when youths clad in goatskins ran through the streets flailing bystanders with leather thongs from sacrificed goats and dogs, and the Mamuralia, for which a scapegoat figure was beaten with sticks.

[12] The procession route involved the temples of Juventas ("Youth") and Summanus, an obscure and complex chthonic god of archaic Roman religion who shares some attributes with both Jupiter and Pluto.

[13] Sources mentioning the ritual agree that the "punishment" was inflicted on the dogs for their failure to warn the Romans of the stealth attack against the citadel by the Gauls during the Gallic siege of Rome in 390 BC (or 387).

Legends vary regarding this historical event—the only sack of the city during the Republican era—but in the sources that allude to the supplicia canum, temple geese are said to have raised the alarm instead.

[16] In some stories, Marcus Manlius Capitolinus led the way in responding to the alarm, warding off the first Gaul to reach the top of the Capitoline cliff, or alternatively expelling them from the Temple of Jupiter, which they had entered through tunnels.

[19] Roman narrative traditions regarding the Gallic siege are complex, "a hopeless jumble of aetiological tales, family apologias, doublets, and transferences from Greek history",[20] including an improbable last-minute victory or at least the holding of the citadel itself, thanks to the geese.

According to the Iguvine Tablets, Oscans sacrificed an unblemished dog or puppy to the chthonic Hondus Jovius: it was butchered, and certain parts roasted on spits, with remains left after the sacrifice buried at the altar.

Victims such as dogs were considered inedible, as was the October Horse offered to Mars, and were usually consumed in a holocaust for deities whose spheres of influence pertained to the cycle of birth and death, such as Hecate and Mana Genita.