Classical style being the requirement of the age, it followed that everything was sacrificed to this. In christening their children the great families abandoned the saints of the calendar and chose names from mythology. Ettorre, Achille, Atalanta, Pentesilea, Lucrezia, Porzia, Alessandro, Annibale, Laomedonte, Fedro, Ippolito, and many other antique titles became fashionable. Those who were able to do so turned their baptismal names into Latin or Greek equivalents. Janus or Jovianus passed for Giovanni, Pierius for Pietro, Aonius for Antonio, Lucius Grassus for Luca Grasso; the German prelate John Goritz was known as Corycius,[371] and the Roman professor Gianpaolo Parisio as Janus Parrhasius. Writers who undertook to treat of modern or religious themes, were driven by their zeal for purism to the strangest expedients of language. God, in the Latin of the sixteenth century, is _Jupiter Optimus Maximus_; Providence becomes _Fatum_; the saints are _Divi_, and their statues _simulacra sancta Deorum_. Our Lady of Loreto is changed into _Dea Lauretana_, Peter and Paul into _Dii tutelares Romæ_, the souls of the just into _Manes pii_, and the Pope's excommunication into _Diræ_. The Holy Father himself takes the style of _Pontifex Maximus_; his tiara, by a wild confusion of ideas, is described as _infula Romulea_. Nuns are Vestals, and cardinals Augurs. For the festivals of the Church periphrases were found, whereof the following may be cited as a fair specimen:[372] '_Verum accidit ut eo ipso die, quo domum ejus accesseram, ipse piæ rei caussâ septem sacrosancta Divûm pulvinaria supplicaturus inviserit; erant enim lustrici dies, quos unoquoque anno quadragenos purificatione consecravit nostra pietas._' [Footnote 371: Namque sub Oebaliæ memini me turribus altis Qua niger humectat flaventia culta Galesus _Corycium_ vidisse _senem_.--Virg. _Georg._ lib. iv. 125.] [Footnote 372: From the exordium to Valeriano's treatise _De Infelicitate Literatorum_.]