Quaestiones Romanae

Why do they inflict no other punishment on those of the Holy Maidens[*](Plutarch elsewhere uses a similar expression (παρθένος ἱέρεια) for the vestal virgins, e.g. in his Life of Publicola, chap. viii. (101 b) or Moralia, 89 e.) who have been seduced, but bury them alive?[*](Cf.Life of Numa, chap. x. (67 a-c); Ovid, Fasti, vi. 457-460; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, ii. 67. 4, viii. 89. 5; Pliny, Epistles, iv. 11. 6.)

Is it because they cremate their dead, and to use fire in the burial of a woman who had not guarded the holy fire in purity was not right?

Or did they believe it to be against divine ordinance to annihilate a body that had been consecrated by the greatest of lustra! ceremonies, or to lay hands upon a holy woman? Accordingly they devised that she should die of herself; they conducted her underground into a chamber built there, in which had been placed a lighted lamp, a loaf of bread,

and some milk and water. Thereafter they covered over the top of the chamber with earth. And yet not even by this manner of avoiding the guilt have they escaped their superstitious fear, but even to this day the priests proceed to this place and make offerings to the dead.

Why is it that after the chariot-race on the Ides of December[*](Presumably an error of Plutarch’s: he means the tenth month, October: Cf. Festus, s.v. October equus, p. 178. 5.) the right-hand trace-horse of the winning team is sacrificed to Mars, and then someone cuts off its tail, and carries it to the place called Regia and sprinkles its blood on the altar, while some come down from the street called the Via Sacra, and some from the Subura, and fight for its head?

Is it, as some[*](Such as the historian Timaeus: Cf. Polybius xii. 4b.) say, that they believe Troy to have been taken by means of a horse: and therefore they punish it, since, forsooth, they are

Noble scions of Trojans commingled with children of Latins.[*](A verse made in imitation of Homer, Il. xviii. 337 (or xxiii. 23), blended with a part of x. 424.)

Or is it because the horse is a spirited, warlike, and martial beast, and they sacrifice to the gods creatures that are particularly pleasing and appropriate for them: and the winner is sacrificed because Mars is the specific divinity of victory and prowess?

Or is it rather because the work of the god demands standing firm, and men that hold their ground defeat those that do not hold it, but flee? And is swiftness punished as being the coward’s resource, and do they learn symbolically that there is no safety for those who flee?