Plutarch Quaestiones Romanae 112

[112]

Question 112.

What is the reason that the priest of Jupiter is forbid to touch an ivy, or to pass over that way that is overspread with vine branches?

Solution. Is it not of the like nature with those precepts of Pythagoras, not to eat in a chair, not to sit upon a measure called a choenix, and not to step over a broom? For the Pythagoreans do not dread and refrain from these things, but they prohibit other things by these. Now to go under a vine hath reference to wine, because it is not lawful for a priest to be drunk. For the wine is above the heads of those that are drunk, and they are depraved and debased thereby; whereas it is requisite that they should be above pleasure and conquer it, but not be subdued by it. As for the ivy,—it being unfruitful and useless to men, as also infirm, and by reason of its infirmity standing in need of other trees to climb upon, though by its shadow and sight of its greenness it doth bewitch the vulgar,—what if they judge it not convenient to nourish it about a house because it bringeth no profit, or to suffer it to clasp about any thing, seeing it is so hurtful to plants that bear it up, while it sticketh fast in the ground? Hence ivy is forbidden at the Olympic festivals, and neither at Athens in Juno’s sacrifices, nor at Thebes in those belonging to Venus, can any wild ivy be seen; though in the Agrionia and Nyctelia (which are services to Bacchus for the most part performed in the dark) it is to be found. Or was this a symbol of the prohibition of revels and sports of Bacchus? For women that were addicted to Bacchanal sports presently ran to the ivy and plucked it off, tearing it in pieces with their hands and gnawing it with their mouths, so that they are not altogether to be disbelieved that say it hath a spirit in it that stirreth and moveth to madness, transporting and bereaving of the senses, and that alone by itself it introduceth drunkenness without wine to those that have an easy inclination to enthusiasm.