Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, section 1

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Why do they bid the bride touch fire and water?

Is it that of these two, being reckoned as elements or first principles, fire is masculine and water feminine,¹ and fire supplies the beginnings of motion and water the function of the subsistent element or the material?

Or is it because fire purifies and water cleanses, and a married woman must remain pure and clean?

Or is it that, just as fire without moisture is unsustaining and arid, and water without heat is unproductive and inactive,² so also male and female apart from each other are inert, but their union in marriage produces the perfection of their life together?

Or is it that they must not desert each other, but must share together every sort of fortune, even if they are destined to have nothing other than fire and water to share with each other?

1 Cf. Varro, De Lingua Latina, v. 61. The genders are those of ignis and aqua, not those of the Greek words.

2 Cf. Moralia, 650 b; Servius on Virgil, Aeneid, iv. 167; Lactantius, Institutiones Divinae, ii. 9. 21.

Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. 4.

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