Note 16 — VIRGINITY AND ITS TRADITIONS.

Brantôme, apparently, had a poor opinion of Spartan virginity. “What kind of virtue was it?” he asks. (Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies.) “Why! on their solemn feast-days the Spartan maids were used to sing and dance in public stark naked with the lads, and even wrestle in the open market place,—the which however was done in all honesty and good faith, so History saith. But what sort of honesty and purity was this, we may well ask, to look on at these pretty maids so performing publicly? Honesty was it never a whit, but pleasure in the sight of them, and especially of their bodily movements and dancing postures, and above all in their wrestling; and chiefest of all when they came to fall one atop of the other, as they say in Latin: ‘She underneath, he atop; he underneath, she atop.’ You will never persuade me ‘twas all honesty and purity herein with these Spartan maidens. I ween there is never chastity so chaste that would not have been shaken thereby, or that, so making in public and by day these feint assaults, they did not presently in privity and by night and on assignation proceed to greater combats and night attacks.”