The Augustan grammarian Verrius Flaccus connected the Lucaria to the disastrous defeat of the Romans by the Gauls at the Battle of the Allia, which was fought on July 18. The festival, he says, was celebrated in the large grove between the Via Salaria and the Tiber river, where the Romans who survived the battle had hidden. The Via Salaria crossed the battlefield about 10 miles north of Rome. The "lucus" thus would have been located on the Pincian Hill, which was later cultivated as gardens and leisure parks by Lucullus, Pompeius, Sallust and others. This explanatory story has been compared to that of the Poplifugia, which also involved the Gallic sack of Rome. The story may be more aetiological than historical. The Lucaria suggests that grove veneration was a practice which the early Romans had in common with the Gauls.