Castoreum Castoreum Castoreum is a yellowish exudate from the castor sacs of the mature North American beaver ("Castor canadensis") and the European beaver ("Castor fiber"). Beavers use castoreum in combination with urine to scent mark their territory. Both beaver sexes have a pair of castor sacs and a pair of anal glands, located in two cavities under the skin between the pelvis and the base of the tail. The castor sacs are not true glands (endocrine or exocrine) on a cellular level, hence references to these structures as preputial glands, castor glands, or scent glands are misnomers. It is used as
Castor and Pollux represented in the Circus Maximus by the use of eggs as lap counters. In translations of comedies by Plautus, women generally swear by Castor, and men by Pollux; this is exemplified by the slave-woman character Staphyla in "A Pot of Gold" (act i, ll.67–71) where she swears by Castor in line 67, then the negative prefix in line 71 denotes a refutation against swearing by Pollux. The Etruscans venerated the twins as "Kastur" and "Pultuce", collectively the "tinas cliniiaras", "sons of Tinia," the Etruscan counterpart of Zeus. They were often portrayed on Etruscan mirrors. As was the fashion in Greece,