A question-and-answer catalog of Roman customs (weddings, funerals, sacrifices, calendar) with Plutarch offering several rival explanations for each.
Quaestiones Romanae ("Roman Questions") is one of the antiquarian essays collected in Plutarch's Moralia. It is built as a long series of standalone questions - over a hundred of them - each beginning "Why do they..." or "Why is it that..." and followed by two, three, or more possible answers that Plutarch lays out without always choosing between them. The subjects range across the whole texture of Roman life: marriage rites (why brides touch fire and water, why five torches are lit at weddings), funeral customs (why sons cover their heads carrying out a parent's body while daughters go bareheaded), taboos around gift-giving between spouses, the reason January rather than March opens the year, why certain temples exclude men or slaves, and the origin of tithing a tenth of one's wealth to Hercules.
Plutarch does not argue for a single theory of Roman religion. Instead each question functions as a small essay in comparative explanation, weighing mythological stories (Aeneas covering his head before Diomedes, the tale of Ino and the shrine of Leukothea), etymological arguments, appeals to named authorities such as Varro, Juba, and Aristotle, and structural or moral reasoning (odd numbers as more "nuptial" than even ones, gift-giving between spouses undermining the idea that a married couple's property is held in common). He regularly draws parallels to Greek practice, since the whole work is aimed at Greek readers trying to make sense of a foreign society's rituals - the same impulse that runs through his more famous parallel Lives of Greek and Roman statesmen.
The work matters less for any grand thesis than as a documentary window into Roman custom as understood by an educated, well-read Greek of the late first and early second century CE, working from earlier Roman antiquarian sources (chiefly Varro) that are otherwise lost or fragmentary. It preserves stories, etymologies, and social rules - about marriage, mourning, slavery, temple access, and the civic calendar - that would otherwise be known only in scattered form, and it shows Plutarch's characteristic method: multiplying explanations rather than settling on one.
“Why do they command the bride to touch fire and water?”
— Quaestiones Romanae · read this chapter →
“Why do they light not more, and not fewer, but five torches at weddings, torches which they call "keriones"?”
— Quaestiones Romanae · read this chapter →
“Why is it that those who have been falsely reported to have died abroad, even if they return, are not received in through the door, but climb up onto the roof-tile and are let down inside?”
— Quaestiones Romanae · read this chapter →
“Why is it forbidden for a husband to accept a gift from his wife, and a wife from her husband?”
— Quaestiones Romanae · read this chapter →
“Why do they reckon the month of January as the beginning of the new year?”
— Quaestiones Romanae · read this chapter →
It is a Plutarch essay from the Moralia structured as over a hundred separate questions about Roman customs - marriage, funerals, temple taboos, the calendar - each followed by multiple possible explanations. It does not tell a continuous story; it is a reference-style catalog of Roman antiquarian lore aimed at Greek readers.
Usually not. His typical pattern is to offer two, three, or four rival explanations - mythical, etymological, moral, or practical - and leave them standing side by side rather than declaring a winner.
Plutarch offers several possibilities: that fire and water symbolize male and female principles, that fire purifies and water cleanses to mark the bride's purity, or that the two elements represent how male and female need each other, since fire without moisture and water without heat are each incomplete.
He notes that sons carry a dead parent out with heads covered while daughters go bareheaded with hair unbound, and weighs explanations including that sons honor fathers as gods while daughters mourn them as the dead, and that covering the head was simply not customary for women to begin with.
He most often cites the Roman antiquarian Varro, along with Juba and, in one case, Aristotle, as authorities for the customs and myths he records - preserving material from works now largely lost.
Plutarch reports that March was originally first (linked to the war-god Romulus favored), but that Numa Pompilius, a peace-oriented king, promoted January and the god Janus instead; Plutarch adds his own preference for beginning the year at the winter solstice, when daylight starts increasing.
Moralia: Ad Principem Ineruditum · Moralia: Adversus Colotem · Moralia: Amatoriae Narrationes · Moralia: Amatorius · Moralia: An Recte Dictum Sit Latenter Esse Vivendum · Moralia: An Seni Respublica Gerenda Sit · Moralia: An Virtus Doceri Possit · Moralia: An Vitiositas Ad Infelicitatem Sufficia · Moralia: Animine An Corporis Affectiones Sint Piores · Moralia: Apophthegmata Laconica · Moralia: Aquane An Ignis Sit Utilior · Moralia: Bruta Animalia Ratione Uti