107
Solution. Is it for the reason which C. Rufus tells us? For he says, that in ancient time, C. Sulpicius and Licinius Stolo, being consuls, a pestilence raging in Rome, all the actors upon the stage were cut off; wherefore, upon the request of the Romans, many and good artists came from Etruria, among whom he that excelled in fame and had been longest experienced on the public stages was called Histrus, and from him they named all the stage-players.
108
Question 108. Why do not men marry women that are near akin?
108
Solution. Is this the reason, that they design by marriage to augment their family concerns and to procure many relations, by giving wives to strangers and marrying wives out of other families? Or do they suspect that the contentions that would happen among relations upon marriage would destroy even natural rights? Or is it that, considering that wives by reason of weakness stand in need of many helpers, they would not have near akin marry together, that their own kindred might stand by them when their husbands wrong them?
109
Question 109. Why is it not lawful for the high priest of Jupiter, which they call Flamen Dialis, to touch meal or leaven?
109
Solution. Is it because meal is imperfect and crude nourishment? For the wheat neither hath continued what it was, neither is it made into bread as it must be; but it hath lost the faculty of seed, and hath not attained to usefulness for food. Wherefore the poet hath named meal, by a metaphor, mill-murdered (μυλήφατον), as if the corn were spoiled and destroyed by grinding. Leaven, as it is made by corruption, corrupts the mass that it is mingled with, for it is made thereby looser and weaker; and fermentation is a kind of corruption, which, if it be overmuch, makes the bread sour and spoils it.
110
Question 110. Why is the same high priest forbid to touch raw flesh?
