Quaestiones Romanae

Why do sons cover their heads when they escort their parents to the grave, while daughters go with uncovered heads and hair unbound?

Is it because fathers should be honoured as gods

by their male offspring, but mourned as dead by their daughters, that custom has assigned to each sex its proper part and has produced a fitting result from both?

Or is it that the unusual is proper in mourning, and it is more usual for women to go forth in public with their heads covered and men with their heads uncovered? So in Greece, whenever any misfortune comes, the women cut off their hair and the men let it grow, for it is usual for men to have their hair cut and for women to let it grow.

Or is it that it has become customary for sons to cover their heads for the reason already given?[*](The first reason above: The father should be honoured as a god.) For they turn about at the graves, as Varro relates, thus honouring the tombs of their fathers even as they do the shrines of the gods: and when they have cremated their parents, they declare that the dead person has become a god at the moment when first they find a bone.[*](Cf. Cicero, De Legibus, ii. 22 (57).)

But formerly women were not allowed to cover the head at all. At least it is recorded that Spurius Carvilius[*](Cf. 278 e, infra; Comparison of Lycurgus and Numa, iii. (77 c); Comparison of Theseus and Romulus, vi. (39 b); Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, ii. 25. 7; Valerius Maximus, ii. 1. 4; Aulus Gellius, iv. 3. 2; xvii. 21. 44; Tertullian, Apol. vi., De Monogamia, ix.) was the first man to divorce his wife and the reason was her barrenness: the second was Sulpicius Gallus, because he saw his wife pull her cloak over her head: and the third was Publius Sempronius, because his wife had been present as a spectator at funeral games.[*](Cf. Valerius Maximus, vi. 3. 10.)

Why is it that they were wont to sacrifice no living creature to Terminus,[*](This is certainly not true of later times; Cf. for example, Horace, Epodes, 2. 59.) in whose honour they held the Terminalia, although they regard him as a god?

Is it that Romulus placed no boundary-stones for his country, so that Romans might go forth, seize land, and regard all as theirs, as the Spartan said,[*](Cf.Moralia, 210 e with the note (Vol. III. p. 257).) which their spears could reach; whereas Numa Pompilius,[*](Cf.Life of Numa, xvi. (70 f); Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, ii. 74. 2 ff.) a just man and a statesman, who had become versed in philosophy, marked out the boundaries between Rome and her neighbours, and, when on the boundary-stones he had formally installed Terminus as overseer and guardian of friendship and peace, he thought that Terminus should be kept pure and undefiled from blood and gore?