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
IS it for that (as some Philosophers deeme) they are of opinion that
[135]_Saturne_ is [136]Time? and Time you know well findeth out and
revealeth the Truth.
Or, because as the Poets fable, men lived under _Saturnes_ reigne in the
golden age: and if the life of man was then most just and righteous, it
followeth consequently that there was much trueth in the world.
13.
_What is the reason that they sacrificed likewise unto the god whom they
tearmed_ Honor, _with bare head? now a man may interpret_ Honor _to be as
much as Glory and Reputation_.
IT is haply because Honor and glory is a thing evident, notorious, and
exposed to the knowledge of the whole world: and by the same reason that
they veile bonet before men of worship, dignitie, and honor, they adore
also the deitie that beareth the name of Honor, with the head bare.
14.
_What may be the cause, that sonnes cary their Fathers and Mothers foorth
to be enterred, with their heads hooded and covered: but daughters bare
headed, with their haires detressed and hanging downe loose._
IS it for that Fathers ought to be honored as gods by their male children,
but lamented and bewailed as dead men by their daughters, and therefore the
law having given and graunted unto either sex that which is proper, hath of
both together made that which is beseeming and convenient.
Or, it is in this regard, that unto sorrow and heaviness, that is best
beseeming which is extraordinarie and unusuall: now more ordinarie it is
with women to go abroad with their heads veiled and covered: and likewise
with men, to be discovered and bare headed. For even among the Greeks when
there is befallen unto them any publike calamitie, the manner and custome
is, that the women should cut of the hayres of their head, and the men
weare them long; for that otherwise it is usuall that men should poll their
heads, and women keepe their haire long. And to prove that sonnes were wont
to be covered; in such a case, and for the said cause, a man may alledge
that which _Varro_ hath written; namely, that in the solemnitie of
funerals, and about the tombs of their fathers, they carry themselves with
as much reverence and devotion as in the temples of the gods: in such sort,
as when they have burnt the corps in the funeral fire, so soone as ever
they meet with a bone, they pronounce, that he who is dead, is now become a
god. On the contrary side, women were no wise permitted to vaile and cover
their heads. And we find upon record, that the first man who put away and
divorced his wife was _Spurius Carbilius_, because she bare him no
children; the second, _Sulpitius Gallus_, for that he saw her to cast a
robe over her head: and the third _Publius Sempronius_, for standing to
behold the solemnitie of the funerall games.
15.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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