Why did the priest of Jupiter (Flamen Dialis) resign his office if his wife died, as Ateius has recorded?Cf. Aulus Gellius, x. 15.
Is it because the man who has taken a wife and then lost her is more unfortunate than one who has never taken a wife? For the house of the married man is complete, but the house of him who has married and later lost his wife is not only incomplete, but also crippled.
Or is it because the wife assists her husband in the rites, so that many of them cannot be performed without the wife’s presence, and for a man who has lost his wife to marry again immediately is neither possible perhaps nor otherwise seemly? Wherefore it was formerly illegal for the flamen to divorce his wife: and it is still, as it seems, illegal, but in my day Domitian once permitted it on petition. The priests were present at that ceremony of divorce and performed many horrible, strange, and gloomy rites.Cf.Cambridge Ancient History, vol. vii. p. 422.
One might be less surprised at this resignation of the flamen if one should adduce also the fact that when one of the censors died, the other was obliged to resign his officeCf. Livy, v. 31. 6, 7; vi. 27. 4, 5; ix. 34.; but when the censor Livius Drusus died, his colleague Aemilius Scaurus was unwilling to give up his office until certain tribunes ordered him to be led away to prison.
Why is a dog placed beside the Lares that men call by the special name of praestites, and why are the Lares themselves clad in dog-skins?Cf. Ovid, Fasti, v. 129 ff.
Is it because those that stand before
are termed praestites, and, also because it is fitting that those who stand before a house should be its guardians, terrifying to strangers, but gentle and mild to the inmates, even as a dog is?
Or is the truth rather, as some Romans affirm, that, just as the philosophic school of ChrysippusCf.Moralia, 361 b, 419 a, 1051 c. think that evil spirits stalk about whom the gods use as executioners and avengers upon unholy and unjust men, even so the Lares are spirits of punishment like the Furies and supervisors of mens lives and houses? Wherefore they are clothed in the skins of dogs and have a dog as their attendant, in the belief that they are skilful in tracking down and following up evil-doers.