Note 88 — THE COMB.83

“Nor shall the nurse at orient light returning, with yester-e’en’s thread succeed in circling her neck.”—The Carmina of Catullus: Englished into verse and prose by Sir R. F. Burton and L. C. Smithers: London, 1894. Burton and Smithers, apparently, were unaware of the medical significance of the test, for they add in a note: “The ancients, says Pezay, had faith in another equally absurd test of virginity. They measured the circumference of the neck with a thread. Then the girl under trial took the two ends of the magic thread in her teeth, and if it was found to be so long that its bight could be passed over her head, it was clear she was not a maid. By this rule all the thin girls might pass for vestals, and all the plump ones for the reverse.”