Plutarch's Romane Questions · Plutarch
14.
_What may be the cause, that sonnes cary their Fathers and Mothers foorth to be enterred, with their heads hooded and covered: but daughters bare headed, with their haires detressed and hanging downe loose._ IS it for that Fathers ought to be honored as gods by their male children, but lamented and bewailed as dead men by their daughters, and therefore the law having given and graunted unto either sex that which is proper, hath of both together made that which is beseeming and convenient. Or, it is in this regard, that unto sorrow and heaviness, that is best beseeming which is extraordinarie and unusuall: now more ordinarie it is with women to go abroad with their heads veiled and covered: and likewise with men, to be discovered and bare headed. For even among the Greeks when there is befallen unto them any publike calamitie, the manner and custome is, that the women should cut of the hayres of their head, and the men weare them long; for that otherwise it is usuall that men should poll their heads, and women keepe their haire long. And to prove that sonnes were wont to be covered; in such a case, and for the said cause, a man may alledge that which _Varro_ hath written; namely, that in the solemnitie of funerals, and about the tombs of their fathers, they carry themselves with as much reverence and devotion as in the temples of the gods: in such sort, as when they have burnt the corps in the funeral fire, so soone as ever they meet with a bone, they pronounce, that he who is dead, is now become a god. On the contrary side, women were no wise permitted to vaile and cover their heads. And we find upon record, that the first man who put away and divorced his wife was _Spurius Carbilius_, because she bare him no children; the second, _Sulpitius Gallus_, for that he saw her to cast a robe over her head: and the third _Publius Sempronius_, for standing to behold the solemnitie of the funerall games.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.