Philological Dissertation on Honored, Learned, Adored, and Fruitful Virginity

God answered that Pallas would be appeased by no other rite than if for a thousand years two Virgins were sent to her by lot and through ambushes. Furthermore, if the Trojans meet them as they go, they burn the bones of the slain with barren and wild wood, and throw the ashes from the mountain of Treron in Troy into the sea. But if any of them flee secretly, they become priestesses of Pallas. For they sweep her temple and sprinkle it. Moreover, they did not approach the Goddess, nor did they go out from the temple except at night. They were shorn-headed, barefoot, and covered by a single garment. As for what he says about the shorn head, if you join it with what I related earlier about Parthenope, you will see that when some Virgins renounced marriages, they even cut off their hair, which was the same as women abdicating the beauty by which they might please men.

§. II.

On Erudite Virginity, where it concerns the origin of the Sibyls.

An ornate woodcut initial 'D' features a nude putto figure among scrolling foliage.
I cannot doubt that this word parthenos virgin comes from these two Chaldean words, barthana, which signify pure erudite. For two things adorned the Virgin: purity and erudition. And concerning the first, the matter is certain. I make the case clear regarding erudition. Virgins learned songs and sang them on feast days to pray to the gods and to praise them. Likewise in