101
Or did the Romans of early times account it not disreputable nor disgraceful to love male slaves in the flower of youth, as even now their comediesThe so-called togatae, of which no complete specimen has survived; the palliatae of Plautus and Terence, being based on the Greek New Comedy, would prove nothing. testify, but they strictly refrained from boys of free birth; and that they might not be in any uncertainty, even when they encountered them unclad, did the boys wear this badge?
101
Or is this a safeguard to insure orderly conduct, a sort of bridle on incontinence, that they may be ashamed to pose as men before they have put off the badge of childhood?
101
What Varro and his school say is not credible: that since boulê (counsel) is called bolla by the Aeolians, the boys put on this ornament as a symbol of good counsel.
101
But consider whether they may not wear it because of the moon. For the visible shape of the moon at the first quarter is not like a sphere, but like a lentil-seed or a quoit; and, as Empedocles Cf.Moralia, 891 c; Diogenes Laertius, viii. 77; Diels, Frag. der Vorsokratiker, i. p. 210, A 60. thinks, so also is the matter of which the moon is composed.
102
Why do they name boys when they are nine days old, but girls when they are eight days old?
102
Does the precedence of the girls have Nature as its cause? It is a fact that the female grows up, and attains maturity and perfection before the male. As for the days, they take those that follow the seventh: for the seventh is dangerous for newly-born children in various ways and in the matter of the umbilical cord: for in most cases this comes away on the seventh day: but until it comes off, the child is more like a plant than an animal. Cf. Aulus Gellius, xvi. 16. 2-3.
