Neither a woman, nor a dog, nor a fly: Plutarch and taboos against entrance into Roman and Greek sanctuaries

The paper reflects on taboos against entrance into sacred places, a theme that seizes Plutarch's interest in his two works in the genre of the Question-Literatur, the Quaestiones Romanae (3; 16; 20; 60), regarding sacred places in Rome, and the Quaestiones Graecae (27; 28; 39, 40) for some in Greece. In particular, the paper aims to investigate: (1) the relationship between taboos – often expressed in the form of interdicts in the legislation of individual communities – and the aetiological mythos connected to them; (2) the perception of this relationship by Plutarch and the communities called upon to observe these interdicts; and (3) the influence exerted by taboos in the construction and demarcation of the community and its components.

Plutarch questions, in a non-systematic way, a series of prescriptions concerning entrance into temples and sanctuaries in Rome and Greece. These prescriptions are part of the customs and legislation of the civic groups involved and exclude, from time to time, precise categories often coinciding with the outsiders of ancient communities (e.g. women in QR 60 and QG 40, slaves in QR 16). On the concept of taboo as an interdict, aimed at preserving the equilibrium within social groups, research has developed since Wӓchter 1910 and Frazer 1922, and continued as anthropological and sociological studies progressed (Brelich 1949-50; Brenk 1977; Dillon 1997; Grand-Clement 2017). These studies set out to investigate the meaning that groups attributed to such taboos, often expressed as sacred laws (Sokolowski 1955; Sokolowski 1969; Lupu 2009) and sometimes connected to foundational or prefoundational mythoi, which are functional (Chassignet 2008) in the identity construction of individual communities. Often, however, such studies have excluded the Plutarchean evidence that we propose to investigate here.

Plutarch, homo religiosus et philosophicus of the 2nd century A.D., is a valuable source because –perhaps due to the interrogative form of the works in which he conveys the information– he does not distort the reality underlying these uses (Rose 1924; Halliday 1928; Payen 1998; Nouilhan-PaillerPayen 1999; Boulogne 2002; Payen 2012; Scheid 2012). This paper will quickly illustrate the taboos selected by Plutarch on a case-by-case basis, dwelling on his lexical, syntactic, and formal choices to present the religious entrance prohibitions. Through linguistic analysis, it will be possible to bring out the attitudes and perceptions of Plutarch and the communities involved. After illustrating the cases, the paper will move on to a global analysis of the effects and consequences of taboos on these communities of the 2nd century A.D., which connect these interdicts to the remote times of their origins via aetiological myths; this allows for the uninterrupted preservation of a sense of identity and community.