The custom observed by Troezenian girls of offering tresses of their hair to Hippolytus before their wedding brings him into a relation with marriage, which at first sight seems out of keeping with his reputation as a confirmed bachelor. According to Lucian, youths as well as maidens at Troezen were forbidden to wed till they had shorn their hair in honour of Hippolytus, and we gather from the context that it was their first beard which the young men thus polled.​[111] However we may explain it, a custom of this sort appears to have prevailed widely both in Greece and the East. Plutarch tells us that formerly it was the wont of boys at puberty to go to Delphi and offer of their hair to Apollo; Theseus, the father of Hippolytus, complied with the custom,​[112] which lasted down into historical times.​[113] Argive maidens, grown to womanhood, dedicated their tresses to Athena before marriage.​[114] On the same occasion Megarian girls poured libations and laid clippings of their hair on the tomb of the maiden Iphinoe.​[115] At the entrance to the temple of Artemis in Delos the grave of two maidens was shewn under an olive-tree. It was said that long ago they had come as pilgrims from a far northern land with offerings to Apollo, and dying in the sacred isle were buried there. The Delian virgins before marriage used to cut off a lock of their hair, wind it on a spindle, and lay it on the maidens’ grave. The young men did the same, except that they twisted the down of their first beard round a wisp of grass or a green shoot.​[116] In some places it was Artemis who {p29} received the offering of a maiden’s hair before marriage.​[117] At Panamara in Caria men dedicated locks of their hair in the temple of Zeus. The locks were enclosed in little stone boxes, some of them fitted with a marble lid or shutter, and the name of the dedicator was engraved on a square sinking in the stone, together with the name of the priest for the time being. Many of these inscribed boxes have been found of late years on the spot. None of them bear the names of women; some of them are inscribed with the names of a father and his sons. All the dedications are to Zeus alone, though Hera was also worshipped with him at Panamara.​[118] At Hierapolis, on the Euphrates, youths offered of their beards and girls of their tresses to the great Syrian goddess, and left the shorn hair in caskets of gold or silver, inscribed with their names, and nailed to the walls of the temple.​[119] The custom of dedicating the first beard seems to have been common at Rome under the Empire.​[120] Thus Nero consecrated his first beard in a golden box, studded with costly pearls, on the Capitol.​[121] [Sidenote: Such offerings intended to communicate strength and fertility. Egyptian practice.]