Note 1429 — PERSIUS.

Custos. The Prætexta was intended, as the robes of the priests, to serve as a protection to the youths that wore it. The purple with which the toga was bordered was to remind them of the modesty which was becoming to their early years. It was laid aside by boys at the age of seventeen, and by girls when they were married. The assumption of the toga virilis took place with great solemnities before the images of the Lares, sometimes in the Capitol. It not unfrequently happened that the changing of the toga at the same time formed a bond of union between young men, which lasted unbroken for many years. Hor., i., Od. xxxvi., 9, "Memor Actæ non alio rege puertiæ Mutatæque simul togæ. "The Liberalia, on the 16th before the Kalends of April (i. e., March 17th), were the usual festival for this ceremony. Vid. Cic. ad Att., VI., i., 12. Ovid explains the reasons for the selection. Fast., iii., 771, seq.