The Roman Questions (112-113)

For what reason was it forbidden the priest of Jupiter to touch ivy or to pass along a road overhung by a vine growing on a tree?[*]

Is this second question like the precepts: Do not eat seated on a stool, Do not sit on a peck measure, Do not step over a broom? For the followers of Pythagoras[*] did not really fear these things nor guard against them, but forbade other things through these. Likewise the walking under a vine had reference to wine, signifying that it is not right for the priest to get drunk: for wine is over the heads of drunken men, and they are oppressed and humbled thereby, when they should be above it and always master this pleasure, not be mastered by it.

Did they regard the ivy as an unfruitful plant, useless to man, and feeble, and because of its weakness needing other plants to support it, but by its shade and the sight of its green fascinating to most people? And did they therefore think that it should not be uselessly grown in their homes nor be allowed to twine about in a futile way, contributing nothing, since it is injurious to the plants forming its support?

Or is it because it cleaves to the ground?[*] Wherefore it is excluded from the ritual of the Olympian gods, nor can any ivy be seen in the temple of Hera at Athens, or in the temple of Aphroditê; at Thebes: but it has its place in the Agrionia[*] and the Nyctelia,[*] the rites of which are for the most part performed at night.

Or was this also a symbolic prohibition of Bacchic revels and orgies? For women possessed by Bacchic frenzies rush straightway for ivy and tear it to pieces, clutching it in their hands and biting it with their teeth: so that not altogether without plausibility are they who assert that ivy, possessing as it does an exciting and distracting breath of madness, deranges persons and agitates them, and in general brings on a wineless drunkenness and joyousness in those that are precariously disposed towards spiritual exaltation.[*]

Why were these priests not allowed to hold office nor to solicit it, yet they have the service of a lictor and the right to a curule chair as an honour and a consolation for holding no office?[*]

Is this similar to the conditions in some parts of Greece where the priesthood had a dignity commensurate with that of the kingship, and they appointed as priests no ordinary men?

Or was it rather that since priests have definite duties, whereas officials have duties which are irregular and undefined, if the occasions for these duties happened to coincide, it was impossible for the same man to be present at both, but oftentimes, when both duties were pressing, he had to neglect one of them and at one time commit impiety against the gods, and at another do hurt to his fellow-citizens?

Or did they observe that there is implicit in the government of men no less constraint than authority, and that the ruler of the people, as Hippocrates[*] said

of the physician, must see dreadful things and touch dreadful things and reap painful emotions of his own from the ills of other men? Did they, then, think it impious for a man to offer sacrifice to the gods, and to take the lead in the sacred rites, if he was concerned in pronouncing judgements and sentences of death upon citizens, and often upon kinsmen and members of his household, such as fell to the lot of Brutus?[*]