VIII. [1] So when Recaranus or Hercules had dedicated a massive altar to the Finding Father, he recruited two men from Italy, Potitius and Pinarius, whom he could teach to manage the same rites in a fixed ceremony. [2] But of these men, Potitius, because he had come earlier, was allowed to eat up the entrails, while Pinarius and his descendants, for the very reason that he had come later, were debarred. Hence this is observed nowadays too: Nobody of the family of the Pinarii is permitted to eat at these rites. [3]  Some maintain that they were first called by another name, and that it was really afterwards that they were designated Pinarii ---- from "peina"¹⁹ ---- because, clearly, they go away from sacrifices of this sort unfed and for this reason hungry. [4] And that custom continued up until Appius Claudius the censor, with the people performing the Potitiian rites also eating from the ox which they had sacrificed, and from the point when they had left nothing remaining the Pinarii were then admitted.

[5] In truth, afterwards, Appius Claudius enticed the Potitii with money they received to instruct public slaves in the management of the rites of Hercules and furthermore to admit women as well. [6] They say that within thirty days from this being done the whole family of the Potitii, which had earlier been responsible for the rites, died out, and that the rites therefore came into the hands of the Pinarii, and that they, instructed by their reverence as much as their feelings of duty, faithfully preserved the mysteries of this sort.