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

who did not entrust to them the hidden interpretations of his will. Finally, very many of them professed themselves to be the priestesses of the gods. And if it were not through them on earth, to offer libations to the holy divinities, it was absolutely forbidden to make a sacrifice. And below: But both the maidens, who had followed the goddess mistresses and had stood behind by chance, and the crowd of heroes who had been ordered to arrive, were hurrying. The former, so that they might learn the subject matter for singing. The latter, so that they might review the memory of the sacred cult. Titus Livy, decade 4, book 1, says the Decemviri ordered them to consult the books regarding the portent. The Decemviri ordered the same divine rites from the books that had been performed most recently according to that prodigy. Furthermore, they ordered a poem to be sung through the city by thrice nine Virgins, and a gift to be brought to Juno Regina.

At the funeral of Octavius, according to Suetonius, the children of princes of both sexes sing a dirge. And in the life of Caligula, a golden shield was brought annually to the Capitol by the college of priests, with noble boys and girls singing the praises of his virtues in a modulated song. Statius speaks of a Virgin in book 3 of the Silvae when he says:

Whether embracing the lyre she seeks it, or with a father’s voice
It sounds of what must be learned from the Muses, and she bends my poems.

Epithalamia consisted of an amoebaean alternating poem, which the boys and Virgin maidens sang by turns. Catullus in poem 62, which is an epithalamium:

Close the doors, Virgins,
We have played enough —
and in the wedding song:
See how the unwed maidens seek what they have meditated together.
and below