AN OF THE BOOK

More pleasing works than the present may certainly be found: my object
in writing this was to provide my children, as well as myself, with that
kind of amusement in which they might properly relax and indulge
themselves at the intervals from more important business. I have
preserved the same accidental arrangement which I had before used in
making the collection. Whatever book came into my hand, whether it was
Greek or Latin, or whatever I heard that was either worthy of being
recorded or agreeable to my fancy, I wrote down without distinction and
without order. These things I treasured up to aid my memory, as it were
by a store-house of learning; so that when I wanted to refer to any
particular circumstance or word which I had at the moment forgotten, and
the books from which they were taken happened not to be at hand, I could
easily find and apply it. Thus the same irregularity will appear in
these commentaries as existed in the original annotations, which were
concisely written down without any method or arrangement in the course
of what I at different times had heard or read. As these observations at
first constituted my business and my amusement through many long winter
nights which I spent in Attica, I have given them the name of 'Attic
Nights.' ... It is an old proverb, "A jay has no concern with music, nor
a hog with perfumes:" but that the ill-humor and invidiousness of
certain ill-taught people may be still more exasperated, I shall borrow
a few verses from a chorus of Aristophanes; and what he, a man of most
exquisite humor, proposed as a law to the spectators of his play, I also
recommend to the readers of this volume, that the vulgar and unhallowed
herd, who are averse to the sports of the Muses, may not touch nor even
approach it. The verses are these:--

Silent be they, and far from hence remove,
By scenes like ours not likely to improve,
Who never paid the honored Muse her rights,
Who senseless live in wild, impure delights;
I bid them once, I bid them twice begone,
I bid them thrice, in still a louder tone:
Far hence depart, whilst ye with dance and song
Our solemn feast, our tuneful nights prolong.

THE VESTAL VIRGINS

The writers on the subject of taking a Vestal Virgin, of whom Labeo
Antistius is the most elaborate, have asserted that no one could be
taken who was less than six or more than ten years old. Neither could
she be taken unless both her father and mo