The Roman Questions (intro-4)

The Roman Questions is an attempt to explain one hundred and thirteen Roman customs, the majority of which deal with religious matters. The treatise is one of three similar compilations of wThich two have been preserved and one, the Quaestiones Barbaricae (No. 139 in Lamprias’s list), has been lost. Plutarch possessed a great desire to know the reason why: besides the many discussions of a similar sort contained in the Symposiacs (Table Talk), there is extant a discussion of Physical Causes, and the titles of other writings of the same sort have been preserved for us in Lamprias’s list of Plutarch’s writings.[*]

The Greek title, which means causes, is twice mentioned by Plutarch himself in the Lives,[*] and we might call it The Reasons Why. In nearly every case at least two and often more reasons are given: of these presumably not more than one can be right. Thus the other explanations will embody the results of Plutarch’s researches on the matter or his own quaint speculations. Consequently the book, which is an important source for Roman

customs, especially for religious customs, has been of the greatest service to students of early Roman religion, a field in which so little is certain and which provides (even as it provided for Plutarch) such glorious opportunities for speculation that it has been somewhat overtilled in recent years. Anyone interested in such matters may observe the trend of this scholarship if he will examine F. B. Jevons’ reprint of Holland’s translation of the Roman Questions (London, 1892): or better, H. J. Rose, The Roman Questions of Plutarch, a New Translation with Introductory Essays and a Running Commentary (Oxford, 1924). Professor Rose might, indeed, have improved his translation by consulting some good Greek lexicon: but the essays and the commentary are very valuable, for they contain, among other matters of interest, a discussion of Plutarch’s sources and of early Roman religion: the commentary is fortified with abundant references to ancient writers and to modern scholars. It is a scholarly work and the most important contribution to the study of the Roman Questions since Wyttenbach.

This treatise could hardly have been written by a person ignorant of Latin. Plutarch in his Life of Demosthenes, chap, ii., modestly disavows any profound knowledge of Latin: yet he had read a considerable amount in the language and had spent some time in Rome. Hence he was quite able to use Latin works in compiling the Roman Questions. Some Roman writers he mentions by name, especially Varro, and Verrius Flaccus, an antiquarian of the Augustan age. Livy is specifically cited but twice in the Moralia, once in the present work and once in De Fortuna Romanorum; yet he is referred

to no less than twelve times in the Lives, most of these citations being in the Marcellus and the Camillus. Perhaps Plutarch’s more exact acquaintance with Livy, if he ever acquired this, dates from a time later than the period during which he was engaged in the compilation of the Roman Questions.

Other Roman authorities are mentioned occasionally, such as Cato the Elder, Nigidius Figulus, Antistius Labeo, Ateius Capito, and Fenestella: but no doubt they and others are used in accounts introduced by such expressions as they say, some say, the story is told, and the like. Some of these references have, in fact, been traced by scholars to their originals. It has been remarked of Cicero that any statement found in that author’s works appears, or has appeared, elsewhere. The same affirmation might be made of Plutarch with some confidence. Unless he specifically testifies to oral tradition or hearsay, we may be certain that his facts, like Cicero’s, are drawn from his extensive reading.

Critics lay stress on a few mistakes which Plutarch made in interpreting Latin (these will be found noted in Rose and in Hartman), but against them must be set the unnumbered instances in which he is right. He did not, however, have to depend wholly on Latin writers, for he undoubtedly had at hand the Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1st cent. b.c.) and the works of Juba,[*] the scholarly king of Mauretania, who as a youth had been brought to Rome in 46 b.c. to grace the triumph of Julius Caesar. Juba became greatly interested in Roman

customs, and wrote a book in which he paralleled them with the customs of other peoples.

Many of the matters discussed in the Roman Questions are to be found treated elsewhere in Plutarch’s work, particularly in the Roman Lives. The Lives of Romulus and of Numa are especially rich in parallel passages: for very many of the Roman customs were thought to go back to the earliest period of Roman history.

The book was probably published after the death of Domitian in a.d, 96, though this is a not quite certain inference from the text (276 e). The work is No. 138 in Lamprias’s catalogue of Plutarch’s works. The . ms. tradition (on which see J. B. Titchener, University of Illinois Studies, ix., 1924) is good.

Why do they bid the bride touch fire and water?

Is it that of these two, being reckoned as elements or first principles, fire is masculine and water feminine,[*] and fire supplies the beginnings of motion and water the function of the subsistent element or the material?

Or is it because fire purifies and water cleanses, and a married woman must remain pure and clean?

Or is it that, just as fire without moisture is unsustaining and arid, and water without heat is unproductive and inactive,[*] so also male and female apart from each other are inert, but their union in marriage produces the perfection of their life together?

Or is it that they must not desert each other, but must share together every sort of fortune, even if they are destined to have nothing other than fire and water to share with each other?

Why in the marriage rites do they light five torches, neither more nor less, which they call cereones?

Is it, as Varro has stated, that while the praetors use three, the aediles have a right[*] to more, and it is from the aediles that the wedding party light their torches?

Or is it because in their use of several numbers the odd number was considered better and more perfect for various purposes and also better adapted to marriage? For the even number admits division and its equality of division suggests strife and opposition: the odd number, however, cannot be divided into equal parts at all, but whenever it is divided it always leaves behind a remainder of the same nature as itself. Now, of the odd numbers, five is above all the nuptial number; for three is the first odd number, and two is the first even number, and five is composed of the union of these two, as it were of male and female.[*]

Or is it rather that, since light is the symbol of birth, and women in general are enabled by nature to bear, at the most, five children at one birth,[*] the wedding company makes use of exactly that number of torches?

Or is it because they think that the nuptial pair has need of five deities: Zeus Teleios, Hera Teleia, Aphrodite, Peitho, and finally Artemis, whom women in child-birth and travail are wont to invoke?

Why is it that, although there are many shrines of Diana in Rome, the only one into which men may not enter is the shrine in the so-called Vicus Patricius?

Is it because of the current legend? For a man attempted to violate a woman who was here worshipping the goddess, and was torn to pieces by the dogs: and men do not enter because of the superstitious fear that arose from this occurrence.

Why do they, as might be expected, nail up stags’ horns in all the other shrines of Diana, but in the shrine on the Aventine nail up horns of cattle?

Is it because they remember the ancient occurrence?[*] For the tale is told that among the Sabines in the herds of Antro Curiatius was born a heifer excelling all the others in appearance and size. When a certain soothsayer told him that the city of the man who should sacrifice that heifer to Diana on the Aventine was destined to become the mightiest city and to rule all Italy, the man carne to Rome with intent to sacrifice his heifer. But a servant of his secretly told the prophecy to the king Servius, who told Cornelius the priest, and Cornelius gave instructions to Antro to bathe in the Tiber before the sacrifice: for this, said he, was the custom of those whose sacrifice was to be acceptable. Accordingly Antro went away and bathed, but Servius sacrificed the heifer to Diana before Antro could return, and nailed the horns to the shrine. This tale both Juba[*] and Varro have recorded, except that Varro has not noted the name of Antro: and he says that the Sabine was cozened, not by Cornelius the priest, but by the keeper of the temple.