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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?
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
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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.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 2.
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