[CHAPTER IX]
Of Sneezing.
Concerning Sternutation or Sneezing, and the custom of saluting or blessing upon that motion, it is pretended, and generally believed to derive its original from a disease, wherein Sternutation proved mortal, and such as Sneezed, died. And this may seem to be proved from Carolus Sigonius, who in his History of Italy, makes mention of a Pestilence in the time of Gregory the Great, that proved pernitious and deadly to those that Sneezed. Which notwithstanding will not sufficiently determine the grounds hereof: that custom having an elder Æra, then this Chronology affordeth.
For although the age of Gregory extend above a thousand, yet is this custom mentioned by Apuleius, in the Fable of the Fullers wife, who lived three hundred years before; by Pliny in that Problem of his, Cur Sternutantes salutantur; and there are also reports that Tiberius the Emperour, otherwise a very sower Man, would perform this rite most punctually unto others, and expect the same from others, unto himself. Petronius Arbiter, who lived before them both, and was Proconsul of Bythinia in the raign of Nero, hath mentioned it in these words, Gyton collectione spiritus plenus, ter continuo ita sternutavit ut grabatum concuteret, ad quem motum Eumolpus conversus, Salvere Gytona jubet. Cælius Rhodiginus hath an example hereof among the Greeks, far antienter than these, that is, in the time of Cyrus the younger; when consulting about their retreat, it chanced that one among them Sneezed; at the noise whereof, the rest of the Souldiers called upon Jupiter Soter. There is also in the Greek Anthology A Collection of Greek Epigrams, Titulo εἰς δυσειδεῖς., a remarkable mention hereof in an Epigram, upon one Proclus; the Latin whereof we shall deliver, as we find it often translated.
Non potis est Proclus digitis emungere nasum,
Namq; est pro nasi mole pusilla manus:
Non vocat ille Jovem sternutans, quippe, nec audit
Sternutamentum, tam procul aure sonat.
Proclus with his hand his nose can never wipe,
His hand too little is his nose to gripe;
He Sneezing calls not Jove, for why? he hears