_Solution._ Is the reason (as some say) that they will have none to know the mysteries of the priests who is not a priest? Or that the augur is bound by oath to discover to none the management of sacred things; therefore they refuse to absolve him from his oath, when he is reduced to a private capacity? Or is it that the name of augur is not a title of honor and dignity, but of skill and art? It would therefore be the like case to depose a musician from being a musician or a physician from being a physician, with that of prohibiting a diviner from being a diviner; seeing they cannot take away his faculty, though they deprive him of the title. Moreover they do not substitute augurs, because they will keep to the number of augurs that were at the beginning. _Question 100._ What is the reason that in the Ides of August (which at first they called Sextilis) all the men-servants and maid-servants do feast, but the free women make it most of their business to wash and purge their heads? _Solution._ Was it that King Servius about this day was born of a captive maid-servant, and hence the servants have a vacation time from work; and that rinsing the head was a thing that took its original from a custom of the maid-servants upon the account of the feast, and finally passed also into the free women? _Question 101._ Why do they finify their boys with necklaces, which they call _bullae_? _Solution._ What if this were for the honor of the wives which were taken by force? For as many other things, so this might be one of the injunctions laid on their posterity. Or did they it in honor of Tarquin’s manhood? For it is reported of him that, whilst he was but a boy, being engaged in a battle against the Latins and Tuscans, charging his enemies, he fell from his horse; yet animating those Romans which were engaged in the charge, he led them on courageously. The enemies were put to a remarkable rout, and sixteen thousand were slain; whereupon he had this badge of honor bestowed upon him by his father the king. Or was it that by the ancients it was neither lewd nor dishonorable to love beautiful slaves (as now the comedies testify), but that they resolvedly abstained from free-born servants; and lest, by coming accidentally on naked boys, they should ignorantly transgress, the free boys wore this mark of distinction? Or was this a protector of good order, and after a manner a curb of incontinency; they being ashamed to pretend to manhood before they have put off the badge of children? That which they say who follow Varro is not probable, that _boule_ by the Aeolians is called _bolla_, and this is put about children as a teaching sign of good counsel. But consider whether they do not wear it for the moon’s sake. For the visible face of the moon, when it is halved, is not spherical, but shaped like a lentil or a quoit; and (as Empedocles supposeth) so is also the side that is turned away from us.