Roman Questions (105-107)

Question 105. For what cause was it, that on high holidays it was not a custom for virgins to marry, but widows did marry then?

Solution. Is the reason, as Varro saith, that virgins, forsooth, are married weeping, but women with joyful glee, and people are to do nothing of a holiday with a heavy heart nor by compulsion? Or rather is it because it is decent for virgins to marry with more than a few present, but for widows to marry with a great many present is indecent? For the first marriage is zealously affected, the second to be deprecated; yea, they are ashamed to marry a second husband while their first husband lives, and they

grieve at doing so even when he is dead. Hence they are pleased more with silence than with tumults and pompous doings; and the feasts do attract the generality of people to them, so that they cannot be at leisure on holidays for such wedding solemnities. Or was it that they that robbed the Sabines of their daughters that were virgins on the feast-day raised thereby a war, and looked therefore upon it as unlucky to marry virgins on holidays?

Question 106. Why do the Romans worship Fortuna Primigenia?

Solution. Was it because Servius, being by Fortune born of a servant-maid, came to rule king in Rome with great splendor? And this is the supposition of most Romans. Or rather is it that Fortune hath bestowed on Rome itself its very original and birth? Or may not this matter require a more natural and philosophical reason, even that Fortune is the original of all things and that Nature itself is produced out of things that come by Fortune, when events that come by chance fall into an order among themselves?

Question 107. Why do the Romans call the artists who appear in the worship of Bacchus histriones?

Solution. Is it for the reason which C. Rufus tells us? For he says, that in ancient time, C. Sulpicius and Licinius Stolo, being consuls, a pestilence raging in Rome, all the actors upon the stage were cut off; wherefore, upon the request of the Romans, many and good artists came from Etruria, among whom he that excelled in fame and had been longest experienced on the public stages was called Histrus, and from him they named all the stage-players.