Quaestiones Romanae

Why do men not marry during the month of May?[*](Cf. Ovid, Fasti, v. 489.)

Is it because this month comes between April and June, of which they regard April as sacred to Venus and June as sacred to Juno, both of them divinities of marriage: and so they put the wedding a little earlier or wait until later?

Or is it because in this month they hold their most important ceremony of purification, in which they now throw images from the bridge into the river,[*](Cf. 272 b, supra.) but in days of old they used to throw human beings? Wherefore it is the custom that the Flaminica, reputed to be consecrate to Juno, shall wear a stern face, and refrain from bathing and wearing ornaments at this time.

Or is it because many of the Latins make offerings to the departed in this month? And it is for this reason, perhaps, that they worship Mercury in this month and that the month derives its name from Maia.[*](The mother of Mercury.)

Or is May, as some relate, named after the older (maior) and June after the younger generation (iunior)? For youth is better fitted for marriage, as Euripides[*](From the Aeolus of Euripides; Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 369, Euripides, no. 23; Cf.Moralia, 786 a, 1094 f.) also says:

1. Old age bids Love to take her leave for aye
2. And Aphrodite wearies of the old.

They do not, therefore, marry in May, but wait for June which comes next after May.

Why do they part the hair of brides with the point of a spear?[*](Cf.Life of Romulus, chap. xv. (26 e).)

Does this symbolize the marriage of the first Roman wives[*](The Sabine women.) by violence with attendant war, or do the wives thus learn, now that they are mated to brave and warlike men, to welcome an unaffected, unfeminine, and simple mode of beautification? Even as Lycurgus,[*](Cf.Moralia, 189 e, 227 c, 997 c; and the Life of Lycurgus, chap. xiii. (47 c); Cf. also Comment. on Hesiod, 42 (Bernardakis, vol. vii. p. 72).) by giving orders to make the

doors and roofs of houses with the saw and the axe only, and to use absolutely no other tool, banished all over-refinement and extravagance.

Or does this procedure hint at the manner of their separation, that with steel alone can their marriage be dissolved?

Or is it that most of the marriage customs were connected with Juno?[*](See Roscher, Lexikon der gr.und.röm. Mythologie, ii. coll. 588-592.) Now the spear is commonly held to be sacred to Juno, and most of her statues represent her leaning on a spear, and the goddess herself is surnamed Quirite; for the men of old used to call the spear curis; wherefore they further relate that Enyalius is called Quirinus by the Romans.[*](Cf.Life of Romulus, chap. xxix. (36 b); Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, ii. 48; Ovid, Fasti, ii. 475 ff.)