THENSAE

or TENSAE, highly ornamented sacred vehicles, which, in the solemn pomp of the Circensian games, conveyed the statues of certain deities with all their decorations to the pulvinar i a, and after the sports were over bore them back to their shrines. We are ignorant of their precise form. We know that they were drawn by horses, and escorted ( deducere ) by the chief senators in robes of state, who, along with puer i patrimi [ Patrimi ], laid hold of the bridles and traces, or perhaps a isted to drag the carriage by means of thongs attached for the purpose (and hence the proposed derivation from ten do ). So sacred was this duty considered, that August us, when labouring under sickne , deemed it nece ary to accompany the tensae in a litter. If one of the horses knocked up, or the driver took the reins in his left hand, it was nece ary to recommence the proce ion, and for one of the attendant boys to let go the thong, or to stumble, was profanation. The only gods distinctly named as carried in tensae are Jupiter and Minerva, though others appear to have had the same honour paid them.