Quaestiones Romanae

Why is it that on the Ides of August, formerly called Sextilis, all the slaves, female and male, keep holiday, and the Roman women make a particular practice of washing and cleansing their heads?

Do the servants have release from work because on this day King Servius was born from a captive maid-servant?[*](Cf. 323 b-c, infra.) And did the washing of their heads begin with the slave-women, because of their holiday, and extend itself to free-born women?

Why do they adorn their children’s necks with amulets which they call bullae?[*](Cf.Life of Romulus, xx. (30 c); Pliny, Natural History, xxxiii. 1 (10); Macrobius, Saturnalia, i. 6. 7-17.)

Was it, like many another thing, in honour of their

Or is it to honour the manly courage of Tarquin? For the tale is told that, while he was still but a boy, in the battle against the combined Latin and Etruscan forces he charged straight into the enemy; and although he was thrown from his horse, he boldly withstood those that hurled themselves upon him, and thus gave renewed strength to the Romans. A brilliant rout of the enemy followed, sixteen thousand were killed, and he received this amulet as a prize of valour from his father the king.

Or did the Romans of early times account it not disreputable nor disgraceful to love male slaves in the flower of youth, as even now their comedies[*](The so-called togatae, of which no complete specimen has survived; the palliatae of Plautus and Terence, being based on the Greek New Comedy, would prove nothing.) testify, but they strictly refrained from boys of free birth; and that they might not be in any uncertainty, even when they encountered them unclad, did the boys wear this badge?

Or is this a safeguard to insure orderly conduct, a sort of bridle on incontinence, that they may be ashamed to pose as men before they have put off the badge of childhood?

What Varro and his school say is not credible: that since boulê (counsel) is called bolla by the Aeolians, the boys put on this ornament as a symbol of good counsel.

But consider whether they may not wear it because of the moon. For the visible shape of the moon at the first quarter is not like a sphere, but like a lentil-seed