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Question 20. When the women beautify the temple of the Goddess appropriate to women, which they call Bona, why do they bring no myrtle into the house, although they be zealous of using all budding and flowering vegetables?
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Solution. Is not the reason (as the fabulous write the story) this, that the wife of Faulius a diviner, having drunk wine secretly and being discovered, was whipped by her husband with myrtle rods; hence the women bring in no myrtle, but offer to her a drink-offering of wine, which they call milk? Or is it this, that, as they abstain from many things, so especially they reserve themselves chaste from all things that appertain to venery when they perform that divine service; for they do not only turn their husbands out of doors but banish from the house every male kind, when they exercise this canonical obedience to their Goddess. They therefore reject myrtle as an abomination, it being consecrated to Venus; and the Venus whom at this day they call Murcia they anciently called Myrtia, as it would seem.
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Question 21. Why do the Latins worship a woodpecker, and all of them abstain strictly front this bird?
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Solution. Is it because one Picus by the enchantments of his wife transformed himself, and becoming a woodpecker uttered oracles, and gave oraculous answers to them that enquired? Or, if this be altogether incredible and monstrous, there is another of the romantic stories more probable, about Romulus and Remus, when they were exposed in the open field, that not only a she-wolf gave them suck, but a certain woodpecker flying to them fed them; for even now it is very usual that in meads and groves where a woodpecker is found there is also a wolf, as Nigidius writes. Or rather, as they deem other birds sacred to various Gods, so do they deem this sacred to Mars? For it is a daring and fierce bird, and hath so strong a beak as to drill an oak to the heart by pecking, and cause it to fall.
