Plutarch's Romane Questions / With dissertations on Italian cults, myths, taboos, man-worship, aryan marriage, sympathetic magic and the eating of beans

The text compiles a series of questions about Roman rites, customs, superstitions, and linguistic usages, offering learned answers that mix historical inquiry, mythological comparison, etymology, and philosophical speculation. Each chapter poses a puzzling practice—marriage rituals, sacred taboos, festivals, omens, and culinary oddities—and traces possible origins by comparing Greek, Italian, and wider Indo-European traditions, folk beliefs, and linguistic conjectures. Explanations range from practical or ritual functions to symbolic or moral interpretations, with frequent digressions into related myths and antiquarian notes, producing a compact handbook of antiquities that treats customs as clues to social values, religious ideas, and collective memory.