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

Why do they name boys when they are nine days old, but girls when they are eight days old?

Does the precedence of the girls have Nature as its cause? It is a fact that the female grows up, and attains maturity and perfection before the male. As for the days, they take those that follow the seventh: for the seventh is dangerous for newly-born children in various ways and in the matter of the umbilical cord: for in most cases this comes away on the seventh day: but until it comes off, the child is more like a plant than an animal.[*](Cf. Aulus Gellius, xvi. 16. 2-3.)

Or did they, like the adherents of Pythagoras, regard the even number as female and the odd number as male?[*](Cf. 264 a, supra.) For the odd number is generative, and, when it is added to the even number, it prevails over it. And also, when they are divided into units, the even number, like the female, yields a vacant space between, while of the odd number an integral part always remains. Wherefore they think that the odd is suitable for the male, and the even for the female.

Or is it that of all numbers nine[*](Cf.Moralia, 744 a-b.) is the first square from the odd and perfect triad, while eight is the first cube from the even dyad? Now a man should be four-square,[*](Cf. Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec., Simonides, Frag. 5 (or Edmonds, Lyra Graeca, in L.C.L. ii. p. 284).) eminent, and perfect; but a woman, like a cube, should be stable, domestic, and difficult to remove from her place. And this should be added,

Why do they call children of unknown fathers spurii?[*](Cf. Gaius, Institutiones, i. 64; Valerius Maximus, De Praenominibus, 6 (p. 590 of Kempf’s ed.).)

Now the reason is not, as the Greeks believe and lawyers in court are wont to assert, that these children are begotten of some promiscuous and common seed: but Spurius is a first name like Sextus and Decimus and Gaius. They do not write first names in full, but by one letter, as Titus (T.) and Lucius (L.) and Marcus (M.): or by two, as Tiberius (Ti.) and Gnaeus (Cn.): or by three, as Sextus (Sex.) and Servius (Ser.). Spurius, then, is one of those written by two letters: Sp. And by these two letters they also denote children of unknown fathers, sine patre,[*](The mss. have sine patris; did Plutarch, or some Greek copyist, confuse the Latin genitive and ablative, since they are one in Greek?) that is without a father: by the s they indicate sine and by the p patre. This, then, caused the error, the writing of the same abbreviation for sine patre and for Spurius.

I must state the other explanation also, but it is somewhat absurd: They assert that the Sabines use the word spurius for the pudenda muliebria, and it later came about that they called the child born of an unmarried, unespoused woman by this name, as if in mockery.

Why do they call Bacchus Liber Pater (Free Father)?[*](Cf. Petronius, Satyricon, 41, and Housman’s commentary in Classical Review, xxxii. p. 164.)

Is it because he is the father of freedom to drinkers? For most people become bold and are abounding in frank speech when they are in their cups.[*](Cf.Moralia, 716 b.) Or is it because he has provided the means for libations?

Or is it derived, as Alexander[*](Müller, Frag. Hist. Graec. iii. p. 244; Alexander Polyhistor.) asserts, from Dionysus Eleuthereus,[*](Cf. the inscription on the chair of the priest of Dionysus in the theatre at Athens,Ἱερεῶς Διονύσου Ἐλευθερέως.) so named from Eleutherae in Boeotia?

For what reason is it not the custom for maidens to marry on public holidays, but widows do marry at this time?[*](Cf. Macrobius, Saturnalia, i. 15. 21.)

Is it, as Varro has remarked, that maidens are grieved over marrying, but older women are glad, and on a holiday one should do nothing in grief or by constraint?

Or is it rather because it is seemly that not a few should be present when maidens marry, but disgraceful that many should be present when widows marry? Now the first marriage is enviable: but the second is to be deprecated, for women are ashamed if they take a second husband while the first husband is still living, and they feel sad if they do so when he is dead. Wherefore they rejoice in a quiet wedding rather than in noise and processions. Holidays distract most people, so that they have no leisure for such matters.

Or, because they seized the maiden daughters of the Sabines at a holiday festival, and thereby became involved in war, did they come to regard it as ill-omened to marry maidens on holy days?

Why do the Romans reverence Fortuna Primigenia,[*](Cf. 281 e, supra, 322 f, infra; Cicero, De Legibus, ii. 11; Livy, xxxiv. 53.) or First-born, as one might translate it?

Is it because by Fortune, as they say, it befell Servius, born of a maidservant, to become a famous king of Rome? This is the assumption which the majority of Romans make.

Or is it rather because Fortune supplied the origin and birth of Rome?[*](Cf. 320 b ff., infra.)

Or does the matter have an explanation more natural and philosophic, which assumes that Fortune is the origin of everything, and Nature acquires its solid frame by the operation of Fortune, whenever order is created in any store of matter gathered together at haphazard.

Why do the Romans call the Dionysiac artists[*](Cf.Moralia, 87 f.) histriones [*](Cf. Livy, vii. 2; closely followed by Valerius Maximus, ii. 4. 4.)?

Is it for the reason that Cluvius Rufus[*](Peter, Frag. Hist. Rom. p. 314, Cluvius, Frag. 4.) has recorded? For he states that in very ancient times, in the consulship of Gaius Sulpicius and Licinius Stolo,[*](In 361 b.c.) a pestilential disease arose in Rome and destroyed to a man all persons appearing on the stage. Accordingly, at the request of the Romans, there came many excellent artists from Etruria, of whom the first in repute and the one who for the longest time enjoyed success in their theatres, was named Hister: and therefore ali actors are named histriones from him.

Why do they not marry women who are closely akin to them?

Do they wish to enlarge their relationships by marriage and to acquire many additional kinsmen by bestowing wives upon others and receiving wives from others?

Or do they fear the disagreements which arise in marriages of near kin, on the ground that these tend to destroy natural rights?

Or, since they observed that women by reason of their weakness need many protectors, were they not willing to take as partners in their household women closely akin to them, so that if their husbands wronged them, their kinsmen might bring them succour?

Why was it not permitted for the priest of Jupiter, whom they call the Flamen Dialis, to touch either flour or yeast?[*](Cf. Aulus Gellius, x. 15. 19.)

Is it because flour is an incomplete and crude food? For neither has it remained what it was, wheat, nor has it become what it must become, bread; but it has both lost the germinative power of the seed and at the same time it has not attained to the usefulness of food. Wherefore also the Poet by a metaphor applied to barley-meal the epithet mylephatosas,[*](Homer, Od. ii. 355: mill-slaughtered. ) if it were being killed or destroyed in the grinding.

Yeast is itself also the product of corruption, and produces corruption in the dough with which it is mixed: for the dough becomes flabby and inert, and altogether the process of leavening seems to be one of putrefaction[*](Cf.Moralia, 659 b.); at any rate if it goes too far, it completely sours and spoils the flour.

Why is this priest also forbidden to touch raw flesh?

Is this custom intended to deter people completely from eating raw meat, or do they scrupulously repudiate flesh for the same reason as flour? For neither is it a living creature nor has it yet become a cooked food. Now boiling or roasting, being a sort of alteration and mutation, eliminates, the previous form; but fresh raw meat does not have a clean and unsullied appearance, but one that is repulsive, like a fresh wound.

Why did they bid the priest avoid the dog and the goat, neither touching them nor naming them?

Did they loathe the goat’s lasciviousness and foul odour, or did they fear its susceptibility to disease? For it is thought to be subject to epilepsy beyond all other animals, and to infect persons who eat it[*](Contrast Pliny, Natural History, xxviii. 16 (226), who says that goat’s meat was given for epilepsy.) or touch it when it is possessed of the disease. The reason, they say, is the narrowness of the air passages, which are often suddenly contracted; this they deduce from the thinness of its voice. So also in the case of men, if they chance to speak during an epileptic fit, the sound they make is very like a bleat.

The dog has, perhaps, less of lasciviousness and foul odour. Some, however, assert that a dog may not enter either the Athenian acropolis[*](Cf.Comparison of Demetrius and Antony, chap. iv. (95-97 b); Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Dinarcho, 3.) or the island of Delos[*](Cf. Strabo, x. 5. 5, p. 684 (Meineke).) because of its open mating, as if cattle and swine and horses mated within the walls of a chamber

Nor, in fact, did the men of old think that this animal was wholly pure, for it was never sacrificed to any of the Olympian gods: and when it is sent to the cross-roads as a supper for the earth-goddess Hecatê,[*](Cf. 277 b, 280 c, supra; Life of Romulus, xxi. (31 e).) it has its due portion among sacrifices that avert and expiate evil. In Sparta they immolate puppies to the bloodiest of the gods, Enyalius: and in Boeotia the ceremony of public purification is to pass between the parts of a dog which has been cut in twain. The Romans themselves, in the month of purification,[*](February; Cf. 280 b, supra.) at the Wolf Festival, which they call the Lupercalia, sacrifice a dog. Hence it is not out of keeping that those who have attained to the office of serving the

For what reason was it forbidden the priest of Jupiter to touch ivy or to pass along a road overhung by a vine growing on a tree?[*](Cf. Aulus Gellius, x. 15. 12.)

Is this second question like the precepts: Do not eat seated on a stool, Do not sit on a peck measure, Do not step over a broom? For the followers of Pythagoras[*](Cf. 281 a, supra; Moralia, 727 c.) did not really fear these things nor guard against them, but forbade other things through these. Likewise the walking under a vine had reference to wine, signifying that it is not right for the priest to get drunk: for wine is over the heads of drunken men, and they are oppressed and humbled thereby, when they should be above it and always master this pleasure, not be mastered by it.

Did they regard the ivy as an unfruitful plant, useless to man, and feeble, and because of its weakness needing other plants to support it, but by its shade and the sight of its green fascinating to most people? And did they therefore think that it should not be uselessly grown in their homes nor be allowed to twine about in a futile way, contributing nothing, since it is injurious to the plants forming its support?

Or is it because it cleaves to the ground?[*](It clings to the earth, unless it finds support, and is therefore unacceptable to the higher gods.) Wherefore it is excluded from the ritual of the Olympian gods, nor can any ivy be seen in the temple of Hera at Athens, or in the temple of Aphroditê; at Thebes: but it has its place in the Agrionia[*](Cf. 299 f, infra.) and the Nyctelia,[*](Cf.Moralia, 364 f.) the rites of which are for the most part performed at night.

Or was this also a symbolic prohibition of Bacchic revels and orgies? For women possessed by Bacchic frenzies rush straightway for ivy and tear it to pieces, clutching it in their hands and biting it with their teeth: so that not altogether without plausibility are they who assert that ivy, possessing as it does an exciting and distracting breath of madness, deranges persons and agitates them, and in general brings on a wineless drunkenness and joyousness in those that are precariously disposed towards spiritual exaltation.[*](Plutarch’s fullest treatment of the properties of ivy will be found in Moralia, 648 b-649 f.)

Why were these priests not allowed to hold office nor to solicit it, yet they have the service of a lictor and the right to a curule chair as an honour and a consolation for holding no office?[*](Cf. Aulus Gellius, x. 15. 4.)

Is this similar to the conditions in some parts of Greece where the priesthood had a dignity commensurate with that of the kingship, and they appointed as priests no ordinary men?

Or was it rather that since priests have definite duties, whereas officials have duties which are irregular and undefined, if the occasions for these duties happened to coincide, it was impossible for the same man to be present at both, but oftentimes, when both duties were pressing, he had to neglect one of them and at one time commit impiety against the gods, and at another do hurt to his fellow-citizens?

Or did they observe that there is implicit in the government of men no less constraint than authority, and that the ruler of the people, as Hippocrates[*](In the De Flatibus: vol. vi. p. 213 (ed. Chartier); vol. i. p. 569 (Kühn); Cf. Lucian, Bis Accusatus, 1.) said