The Roman Questions (70-74)

Why do they call such persons as stand convicted of theft or of any other servile offences furciferi?[*]

Is this also evidence of the carefulness of the men of old? For anyone who had found guilty of some knavery a slave reared in his own household used to command him to take up the forked stick, which they put under their carts, and to proceed through the community or the neighbourhood, observed of all observers, that they might distrust him and be on their guard against him in the future. This stick we call a prop, and the Romans furca (fork):

wherefore also he who has borne it about is called furcifer (fork-bearer).

Why do they tie hay to one horn of vicious bulls to warn anyone who meets them to be on guard?

Is it because bulls, horses, asses, men, all wax wanton through stuffing and gorging? So Sophocles[*] has somewhere written,

You prance, as does a colt, from glut of food,

For both your belly and your cheeks are full.

Wherefore also the Romans used to say that Marcus Crassus[*] had hay on his horn: for those who heckled the other chief men in the State were on their guard against assailing him, since they knew that he was vindictive and hard to cope with. Later, however, another saying was bandied about, that Caesar had pulled the hay from Crassus: for Caesar was the first to oppose Crassus in public policy and to treat him with contumely.

Why did they think that the priests that take omens from birds, whom they formerly called Auspices, but now Augures, should always keep their lanterns open and put no cover on them?

Were they like the Pythagoreans,[*] who made small matters symbols of great, forbidding men to sit on a peck measure or to poke a fire with a sword: and even so did the men of old make use of many riddles, especially with reference to priests: and is the question of the lantern of this sort? For the

lantern is like the body which encompasses the soul; the soul within is a light[*] and the part of it that comprehends and thinks should be ever open and clear-sighted, and should never be closed nor remain unseen.

Now when the winds are blowing the birds are unsteady, and do not afford reliable signs because of their wandering and irregular movements. Therefore by this custom they instruct the augurs not to go forth to obtain these signs when the wind is blowing, but only in calm and still weather when they can use their lanterns open.

Why was it forbidden to priests that had any sore upon their bodies to sit and watch for birds of omen?

Is this also a symbolic indication that those who deal with matters divine should be in no way suffering from any smart, and should not, as it were, have any sore or affection in their souls, but should be untroubled, unscathed, and undistracted?

Or is it only logical, if no one would use for sacrifice a victim afflicted with a sore, or use such birds for augury, that they should be still more on their guard against such things in their own case, and be pure, unhurt, and sound when they advance to interpret signs from the gods?[*] For a sore seems to be a sort of mutilation or pollution of the body.

Why did King Servius Tullius build a shrine of Little Fortune, which they call Brevis?[*]

Is it because although, at the first, he was a man of little importance and of humble activities and the

son of a captive woman, yet, owing to Fortune, he became king of Rome? Or does this very change reveal the greatness rather than the littleness of Fortune, and does Servius beyond all other men seem to have deified the power of Fortune,[*] and to have set her formally over all manner of actions? For he not only built shrines[*] of Fortune the Giver of Good Hope, the Averter of Evil, the Gentle, the First-Born,[*] and the Male: but there is also a shrine of Private Fortune, another of Attentive Fortune, and still another of Fortune the Virgin. Yet why need anyone review her other appellations, when there is a shrine of the Fowler’s Fortune, or Viscata, as they call her, signifying that we are caught by Fortune from afar and held fast by circumstances?

Consider, however, whether it be not that Servius observed the mighty potency of Fortune’s ever slight mutation, and that by the occurrence or nonoccurrence of some slight thing, it has often fallen to the lot of some to succeed or to fail in the greatest enterprises, and it was for this reason that he built the shrine of Little Fortune, teaching men to give great heed to events, and not to despise anything that they encountered by reason of its triviality.