Plutarch's Romane Questions · Plutarch
109.
_Why is it not lawfull for_ Jupiters _priest, whom they name_ Flamen Dialis _to handle or once touch meale or leaven_. FOR meale, is it not because it is an unperfect and raw kind of nourishment? for neither continueth it the same that it was, to wit, wheat, &c. nor is that yet which it should be, namely bread: but hath lost that nature which it had before of seed, and withall hath not gotten the use of food and nourishment. And hereupon it is, that the poet calleth meale (by a Metaphor or borrowed speech) _Mylephaton_, which is as much to say, as killed and marred by the mill in grinding: and as for leaven, both it selfe is engendered of a certaine corruption of meale, and also corrupteth (in a maner) the whole lumpe of dough, wherein it is mixed: for the said dough becommeth lesse firme and fast than it was before, it hangeth not together; and in one word the leaven of the paste seemeth to be a verie putrifaction and rottennesse thereof. And verely if there be too much of the leaven put to the dough, it maketh it so sharpe and soure that it cannot be eaten, and in verie truth spoileth the meale quite. _Wherefore is the said priest likewise forbidden to touch raw flesh?_
IS it by this custome to withdraw him farre from eating of raw things? Or is it for the same cause that he abhorreth and detesteth meale? for neither is it any more a living animall, nor come yet to be meat: for by boiling and rosting it groweth to such an alteration, as changeth the verie forme thereof: whereas raw flesh and newly killed is neither pure and impolluted to the eie, but hideous to see to; and besides, it hath (I wot not what) resemblance to an ougly sore or filthie ulcer.
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