Plutarch's Romane Questions: With dissertations on Italian cults, myths, taboos, man-worship, aryan marriage, sympathetic magic and the eating of beansPlutarch
Religion
Plutarch's Romane Questions: With dissertations on Italian cults, myths, taboos, man-worship, aryan marriage, sympathetic magic and the eating of beans
Plutarch
Rome -- Religion -- Early works to 1800; Rome -- Social life and customs -- Early works to 1800
FOR it seemeth that this fashion maketh the former doubt and braunch of the
question more difficult to be assoiled: and if that which is reported of
_Aeneas_ be true; namely, that as _Diomedes_ passed along by him whiles he
sacrificed, he covered his head, and so performed his sacrifice; there is
good reason and consequence, that if men be covered before their enemies,
they should be bare when they encounter either their friends, or men of
woorth and honour: for this maner of being covered before the gods, is not
properly respective unto them, but occasioned by accident, and hath, since
that example of _Aeneas_, beene observed and continued.
But if we must say somewhat else beside, consider whether it be not
sufficient to enquire onely of this point; namely, why they cover their
heads when they worship the gods, seeing the other consequently dependeth
heereupon: for they stand bare before men of dignitie and authoritie, not
to doe them any more honor thereby, but contrariwise to diminish their
envie, for feare they might be thought to require as much reverence and the
same honor as is exhibited to the gods, or suffer themselves, and take
pleasure to bee observed and reverenced equally with them: as for the gods
they adored them after this sort; either by way of lowlinesse and humbling
themselves before their majestie, in covering and hiding their heads; or
rather because they feared lest as they made their praiers, there should
come unto their hearing, from without, any sinister voice or inauspicate
and ominous osse: and to prevent such an object they drew their hood over
their eares: And how true it is that they had a carefull eie and regard to
meet with all such accidents, it may appeere by this, that when they went
to any oracle for to be resolved by answer from thence upon a scrupulous
doubt, they caused a great noise to be made all about them, with ringing of
pannes or brasen basons.
Or it may well be, (as _Castor_ saith, comparing in concordance the Romane
fashions with the rites of the Pythagoreans) for that the Dæmon or good
angell within us, hath need of the gods helpe without, and maketh
supplication with covering the head, giving thus much covertly to
understand thereby, that the soule is likewise covered and hidden by the
bodie.
11.
_Why sacrifice they unto_ Saturne _bare-headed_.
IS it because _Aeneas_ first brought up this fashion of covering the head
at sacrifice; and the sacrifice to _Saturnus_ is much more auncient than
his time?
Or, for that they used to be covered unto the celestiall gods: but as for
_Saturne_ he is reputed a Subterranean or terrestriall god?
Or, in this respect, that there is nothing hidden, covered, or shadowed in
Trueth? For among the Romans, _Saturne_ was held to be the father of
Veritie.
12.
_Why doe they repute_ Saturne _the father of Trueth_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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