The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, Vol. 2

fortya she thought proper to leave the priesthood and marry, she had the privilege given her of unhallowing herself and taking a husband, on account of her generous munificence, she having given the Campus Tiberinus, or Campus Martius, to the Roman people. But Acca Larentia was a public prostitute, by which means she obtained a large sum of money. This woman by her will, as it appears in the History of Antias, made, as some say, King Romulus, but according to others the Roman people, heirs of her effects.

The courtezan Leæna was also reverenced with divine honors by the Athenians; and here the lines of Pope present themselves:

’Tis not the vice degrades her to a whore;
Let greatness own her, and she’s mean no more.

See also Gibbon’s account of Theodora, the wife of the Emperor Justinian. The prostitute, who in the presence of innumerable spectators had polluted the theatre of Constantinople, was adored as a queen in the same city, by grave magistrates, orthodox bishops, victorious generals, and captive monarchs. The lines of Pope above quoted are referred by Warburton to this Theodora in particular; but, as Gibbon observes, it must require Warburton’s critical telescope to see this.

a Age of forty.—Originally the vow of virginity taken by the Vestals was perpetual. The first ten years they learned the sacred rites; the next ten they practiced these; and the last instructed their juniors. It was very seldom that they availed themselves of this permission to marry; if they did, it was thought highly unbecoming. See Dionysius of Halicarnassus.