[208] Works, Vol. I. p. 765. Epistola ad Amunem, monachum. (Letter to Amunis, a monk). [209] _Euripides_, Alcestis 98., πυλῶν πάροιθεν δ’ οὐχ ὁρῶ πηγαῖον ὡς νομίζεται χέρνιβ ’ἐπὶ φθιτῶν πύλαις, χαίτα τ’ οὔτις ἐπὶ προθύροις τομαῖος, ἃ δὴ νεκύων πένθει πιτνεῖ. (Before the doors I see no lustral water from the fountain, as is wont at the doors of the departed, and in the forecourt is no shorn hair, which is ever cut in mourning for the dead.) Comp. _Kirchmann_, De funeribus Rom. (On Roman Funerals) bk. I. last ch., bk. II, ch. 15. _Lomeier_, De veterum gentil. lustrationibus (On Public Purifications among the Ancients), ch. 16. _Casaubon_, On the “Characters” of Theophrastus, ch. 16. [210] It may be mentioned by way of supplement that Leprosy among the Ancients was pretty nearly universally regarded as a punishment from the gods. Even the Greeks held this view, as comes out clearly from _Aeschylus_, Choeph. II. 2. This fact points to various conclusions as to liability to infection in Leprosy and the obscurity in which the causes of the disease are involved. [211] In accordance with the explanations given on a previous page it might be thought quite conceivable that so long as the hymen was intact, a part of the mucous discharge of the vagina and of the menstrual blood was retained, and acquired a certain degree of malignity. This acting on points of the penis where the surface had been accidentally broken in the act of defloration, or even on the mucous membrane of the urethra, might exert an injurious influence. [212] _Euripides_, Iphigeneia in Tauris 380. _Porphyrius_, bk. II. περὶ Ἀποχῆς (On Abstinence), _Dio Chrysostom_, Homily XIII, on Epist. to Ephesians.—_Theophrastus_, Charact. ch. 16.—_Th. Bartholinus_, Antiq. veteris puerperii synopsis (Synopsis of Antiquities of Childbirth in Old Times). Copenhagen 1646. 8vo.