Quaestiones Romanae

Question 94. For what reason is the temple of Aesculapius placed without the city?

Solution. Was it because they reckoned it a wholesomer kind of living without the city than within? For the Greeks have placed the edifices belonging to Aesculapius for the most part on high places, where the air is pure and clear. Or is it that they suppose this God was fetched from Epidaurus? For the temple of Aesculapius is not close by that city, but at a great distance from it. Or is it that, by a serpent that went on shore out of a trireme galley into the island and disappeared, they think the God himself intimated to them the place of building his temple?

Question 95. Why was it ordained that they that were to live chaste should abstain from pulse?

Solution. Did they, like the Pythagoreans, abominate beans for the causes which are alleged, and the lathyrus and erebinthus as being named from Lethe and Erebus? Or was it because they used pulse for the most part in their funeral feasts and invocations of the dead? Or rather was it because they should bring empty and slender bodies to their purifications and expiations? For pulse are windy, and cause a great deal of excrements that require purging off. Or is it because they irritate lechery, by reason of their flatulent and windy nature?

Question 96. Why do they inflict no other punishment on Vestal Virgins, when they are defiled, than burying them alive?

Solution. Is this the reason, because they burn the dead, and to bury her by fire who hath not preserved sacred the divine fire would be unjust? Or was it that they judged it a wicked act to cut off a person sanctified by the greatest ceremonial purification, and to lay hands on a holy woman; and therefore they contrived a machine

Question 97. What is the reason that, at the horse-race on the Ides of December, the lucky horse that beats is sacrificed as sacred to Mars; and a certain man, cutting off his tail, brings it to a place called Regia, and besmears the altar with the blood of it; but for the head, one party coming down from the way called Sacred, and others from the Suburra, do fight?

Solution. Whether was it (as some say) that, reckoning that Troy was taken by a horse, they punish a horse, as being the

Renowned Trojan race commixt with Latin boys?

Or is it because a horse is a fierce, warlike, and martial beast, therefore they do sacrifice to the Gods the things that are most acceptable and suitable; and he that conquers is offered, because victory and prowess doth belong to that God? Or is it rather because to stand in battle is the work of God, and they that keep their ranks and files do conquer those that do not keep them but fly, and swiftness of foot is punished as the maintenance of cowardice; so that hereby it is significantly taught that there is no safety to them that run away?

Question 98. What is the reason that the censors entering upon their office do nothing before they have contracted for providing meat for the sacred geese, and for polishing the statue?

Solution. Is this the reason, that they begin with those things that savor of most frugality, and such things as want not much charge and trouble? Or is it in grateful commemoration