The Roman Questions (26-27)

Why do women in mourning wear white robes and white head-dresses?

Do they do this, as men say the Magi do, arraying themselves against Hades and the powers of darkness, and making themselves like unto Light and Brightness?

Or is it that, just as they clothe the body of the dead in white, they think it proper that the relatives should also wear this colour? They adorn the body thus since they cannot so adorn the soul; and they wish to send forth the soul bright and pure, since it is now set free after having fought the good fight in all its manifold forms.

Or are plainness and simplicity most becoming on these occasions? Of the dyed garments, some reflect expense, others over-elaboration: for we may say no less with reference to black than to purple: These be cheating garments, these be cheating colours. [*] That which is naturally black is dyed not through art, but by nature: and when it is

combined with a dark colour, it is overpowered.[*] Only white,[*] therefore, is pure, unmixed, and uncontaminated by dye, nor can it be imitated: wherefore it is most appropriate for the dead at burial. For he who is dead has become something simple, unmixed, and pure, once he has been released from the body, which is indeed to be compared with a stain made by dyeing. In Argos, as Socrates[*] says, persons in mourning wear white garments washed in water.

Why do they regard all the city wall as inviolable and sacred, but not the gates?

Is it, as Varro has written, because the wall must be considered sacred that men may fight and die with enthusiasm in its defence? It was under such circumstances, it seems, that Romulus killed his brother because he was attempting to leap across a place that was inviolable and sacred, and to make it traversable and profane.

But it was impossible to consecrate the gates, for through them they carry out many other objectionable things and also dead bodies.[*] Wherefore the original founders of a city yoke a bull and a cow, and mark out with a plough all the land on which they intend to build[*]; and when they are engaged in tracing[*] the circuit of the walls, as they measure off the space intended for gates, they lift up the ploughshare and thus carry the plough across,

since they hold that all the land that is ploughed is to be kept sacred and inviolable.