Quaestiones Romanae

Plutarch

Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. IV. Babbitt, Frank Cole, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1936 (printing).

Why, when there are two altars of Hercules, do women receive no share nor taste of the sacrifices offered on the larger altar?

Is it because the friends of Carmenta carne late for the rites, as did also the dan of the Pinarii? Wherefore, as they were excluded from the banquet while the rest were feasting, they acquired the name Pinarii (Starvelings).[*](An attempt to derive the word from Greekπεινῶ, be hungry: see further Livy, i. 7; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, i. 40.) Or is it because of the fable of Deianeira and the shirt?[*](The shirt anointed with the blood of Nessus which Deianeira supposed to be a love charm. She sent the shirt to Heracles and thereby brought about his death; hence Heracles may be supposed to hate all women; see Sophocles, Trachiniae, or Ovid, Heroides, ix.)

Why is it forbidden to mention or to inquire after or to call by name that deity, whether it be male or female, whose especial province it is to preserve and watch over Rome?[*](Cf. Macrobius, Saturnalia, iii. 9. 3; Pliny, Natural History, xxviii. 4 (18).) This prohibition they connect with a superstition and relate that Valerius Soranus carne to an evil end because he revealed the name.

Is it because, as certain Roman writers have

recorded, there are certain evocations and enchantments affecting the gods, by which the Romans also believed that certain gods had been called forth[*](Cf., for example, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, xiii. 3; Livy, v. 21 (the evocatio of Juno from Veii); Macrobius, Saturnalia, iii. 9. 7 and 14-16.) from their enemies, and had come to dwell among themselves, and they were afraid of having this same thing done to them by others? Accordingly, as the Tyrians[*](Cf. Diodorus, xvii. 41. 8; Quintus Curtius, iv. 3. 21.) are said to have put chains upon their images, and certain other peoples are said to demand sureties when they send forth their images for bathing or for some other rite of purification, so the Romans believed that not to mention and not to know the name of a god was the safest and surest way of shielding him.

Or as Homer[*](Il. xv. 193.) has written,

Earth is yet common to all,

so that mankind should reverence and honour all the gods, since they possess the earth in common, even so did the Romans of early times conceal the identity of the god who was the guardian of their safety, since they desired that not only this god, but all the gods should be honoured by the citizens?