Among the Guanches of the Canary Islands there were virgins, called Magades or Harimagades, who presided over the cult under the direction of the high-priest, and there were other virgins, highly respected, whose function was to pour water over the heads of newborn children, and who could abandon their office and marry whenever they pleased.[53] The priestesses of the Tshi- and Ew̔e-speaking peoples on the West Coast of Africa are forbidden to marry.[54] In a wood near Cape Padron, in Lower Guinea, lives a priestly king who is allowed neither to leave his house nor to touch a woman.[55]
[53] Bory de St. Vincent, Essais sur les Isles Fortunées, p. 96 sq.
[54] Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 121. Idem, Ew̔e-speaking Peoples, p. 142.
[55] Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, i. 287 sq.
In ancient Persia there were sun priestesses who were obliged to refrain from intercourse with men.[56] The nine priestesses of the oracle of a Gallic deity in Sena were devoted to perpetual virginity.[57] The Romans had their Vestal virgins, whose office, according to tradition, was instituted by Numa. They were compelled to continue unmarried during thirty years, which time they employed in offering sacrifices and performing other rites ordained by the law; and if they suffered themselves to be debauched they were delivered up to the most miserable death, being placed in a subterraneous cell, in their funeral attire, without any sepulchral column, funeral rites, or other customary solemnities.[58] After the expiration of the term of thirty years they might marry on quitting the ensigns of their priesthood; but we are told that very few did this, as those who did suffered calamities which were regarded as ominous by the rest, and induced them to remain virgins in the temple of the goddess till their death.[59] In Greece priestesses were not infrequently required to be virgins, if not for their whole life, at any rate for the duration of their priesthood.[60] Tertullian writes:—“To the Achaean Juno, at the town Aegium, a virgin is allotted; and the priestesses who rave at Delphi know not marriage. We know that widows minister to the African Ceres; they not only withdraw from their still living husbands, but they even introduce other wives to them in their own room, all contact with males, even as far as the kiss of their sons, being forbidden them…. We have heard, too, of continent men, and among others the priests of the famous Egyptian bull.”[61] There were eunuch priests connected with the cults of the Ephesian Artemis,[62] the Phrygian Cybele,[63] and the Syrian Astarte.[64]
[56] Justin, quoted by Justi, ‘Die Weltgeschichte des Tabari,’ in Das Ausland, 1875, p. 307.
[57] Pomponius Mela, De situ orbis, iii. 6.
[58] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanæ, ii. 64 sqq. Plutarch, Numa, x. 7 sqq.
[59] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, ii. 67.
[60] Strabo, xiv. i. 23. Müller, Das sexuelle Leben der alten Kulturvölker, p. 44 sqq. Blümner, Home Life of the Ancient Greeks, p. 325. Götte, Das Delphische Orakel, p. 78 sq.