87
Does this symbolize the marriage of the first Roman wivesThe Sabine women. by violence with attendant war, or do the wives thus learn, now that they are mated to brave and warlike men, to welcome an unaffected, unfeminine, and simple mode of beautification? Even as Lycurgus, Cf.Moralia, 189 e, 227 c, 997 c; and the Life of Lycurgus, chap. xiii. (47 c); Cf. also Comment. on Hesiod, 42 (Bernardakis, vol. vii. p. 72). by giving orders to make the doors and roofs of houses with the saw and the axe only, and to use absolutely no other tool, banished all over-refinement and extravagance.
87
Or does this procedure hint at the manner of their separation, that with steel alone can their marriage be dissolved?
87
Or is it that most of the marriage customs were connected with Juno?See Roscher, Lexikon der gr.und.röm. Mythologie, ii. coll. 588-592. Now the spear is commonly held to be sacred to Juno, and most of her statues represent her leaning on a spear, and the goddess herself is surnamed Quirite; for the men of old used to call the spear curis; wherefore they further relate that Enyalius is called Quirinus by the Romans. Cf.Life of Romulus, chap. xxix. (36 b); Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, ii. 48; Ovid, Fasti, ii. 475 ff.
88
Why do they call the money expended upon public spectacles Lucar?
88
Is it because round about the city there are, consecrated to gods, many groves which they call luci, and they used to spend the revenue from these on the public spectacles?
89
Why do they call the Quirinalia the Feast of Fools? Cf. Ovid, Fasti, ii. 513 ff.
89
Is it because, as JubaMüller, Frag. Hist. Graec. iii. p. 470. states, they apportioned that day to men who did not know their own kith and kin? Curiae Or was it granted to those who, because of some business, or absence from Rome, or ignorance, had not sacrificed with the rest of their tribe on the Fornacalia, that, on this day, they might take their due enjoyment of that festival?
