95.
Why doth the law forbid them that are to live chaste, the eating of pulse?
As touching beanes, is it not in respect of those very reasons for which it is said: That the Pythagoreans counted them abominable? And as for the richling and rich pease, whereof the one in Greeke is called λάθυρος and the other ἐρεβινθος which words seeme to be derived of Erebus, that signifieth the darknesse of hell, and of Lethe, which is as much as oblivion, and one besides of the rivers infernall, it carieth some reason that they should be abhorred therfore.
Or it may be, for that the solemne suppers and bankets at funerals for the dead, were usually served with pulse above all other viands.
Or rather, for that those who are desirous to be chaste, and to live an holy life, ought to keepe their bodies pure and slender; but so it is that pulse be flateous and windy, breeding superfluous excrements in the body, which had need of great purging and evacuation.
Or lastly, because they pricke and provoke the fleshly lust, for that they be full of ventosities.
96.
What is the reason that the Romans punish the holy Vestall Virgins (who have suffered their bodies to be abused and defiled) by no other meanes, than by interring them quicke under the ground?
Is this the cause, for that the maner is to burne the bodies of them that be dead: and to burie (by the meanes of fire) their bodies who have not devoutly and religiously kept or preserved the divine fire, seemed not just nor reasonable?
Or haply, because they thought it was not lawfull to kill any person who had bene consecrated with the most holy and religious ceremonies in the world; nor to lay violent hands upon a woman consecrated: and therefore they devised this invention of suffering them to die of their owne selves; namely, to let them downe into a little vaulted chamber under the earth, where they left with them a lampe burning, and some bread, with a little water and milke: and having so done, cast earth and covered them aloft. And yet for all this, can they not be exempt from a superstitious feare of them thus interred: for even to this day, the priests going over this place, performe (I wot not what) anniversary services and rites, for to appease and pacifie their ghosts.