Question 14. Why do sons carry forth their parents at
funerals with covered heads, but the daughters with uncovered and dishevelled hair?
Solution. Is the reason because fathers ought to be
honored by their sons as Gods, but be lamented by their
daughters as dead, and so the law hath distributed to both
their proper part? Or is it that what is not the fashion is
fit for mourning? For it is more customary for women to
appear publicly with covered heads, and for men with uncovered. Yea, among the Greeks, when any sad calamity
befalls them, the women are polled close but the men wear
their hair long, because the usual fashion for men is to be
polled and for women to wear their hair long. Or was it
enacted that sons should be covered, for the reason we have
above mentioned (for verily, saith Varro, they surround their
fathers' sepulchres at funerals, reverencing them as the temples
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of the Gods; and having burnt their parents, when
they first meet with a bone, they say the deceased person
is deified), but for women was it not lawful to cover their
heads at funerals? History now tells us that the first that
put away his wife was Spurius Carbilius, by reason of barrenness; the second was Sulpicius Gallus, seeing her pluck
up her garments to cover her head; the third was Publius
Sempronius, because she looked upon the funeral games.
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