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Question 109. Why is it not lawful for the high priest
of Jupiter, which they call Flamen Dialis, to touch meal
or leaven?
Solution. Is it because meal is imperfect and crude
nourishment? For the wheat neither hath continued what
it was, neither is it made into bread as it must be ; but it
hath lost the faculty of seed, and hath not attained to usefulness for food. Wherefore the poet hath named meal,
by a metaphor, mill-murdered (μυλήφατον), as if the corn
were spoiled and destroyed by grinding. Leaven, as it is
made by corruption, corrupts the mass that it is mingled
with, for it is made thereby looser and weaker; and fermentation is a kind of corruption, which, if it be overmuch, makes the bread sour and spoils it.
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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