An observer says of this rite: “For the same reason among the Latins, the word for wife, _uxor_, originally _unxor_, was derived from the verb _ungere_, ‘to anoint,’ because the maidens when they reached the threshold of their future husbands, were similarly accustomed to anoint the door-posts.” In support of this fanciful etymology, old-time commentators on Terence and Virgil are cited;[78] which shows, at least, that this ceremony at the threshold of the husband’s home has long been recognized as of vital importance in the marriage contract and relation. It is customary, among the Greeks in Turkey, for the mother of the bridegroom, as he leaves his home to go for his bride on the morning of his wedding, to lay across his pathway a girdle, over which he steps, and to pour a libation of water before him.[79] In the Morea, in the vicinity of Sparta, it is said that, when the bride is brought to her new home, the mother of the bridegroom “stands waiting at the door, holding a glass of honey and water in her hand. From this glass the bride must drink; ... while the lintel of the door is smeared with the remainder; ... in the meantime one of the company breaks a pomegranate on the threshold.”[80] In Rhodes, when the newly married couple enter the doorway of their new home, the husband “dips his finger in a cup of honey, and traces a cross over the door.... A pomegranate is placed on the threshold, which the young husband crushes with his foot as he enters, followed by his wife, over whom the wedding guests throw corn and cotton seeds and orange flower water.”[81] On Skarpanto (Carpathos), an island lying between Rhodes and Crete, when the bridegroom reaches the door of the bride’s house “he is greeted by the mother of the bride, who touches the nape of his neck with a censer containing incense.... She further gives him a present called _embatikon_,–that is to say, ‘the gift of in-going,’–and then places on the threshold a rug or blanket folded, with a stick resting on one of the corners. The bridegroom advances his right foot, breaks the stick and passes in.”[82] Among the Morlacchi, in Dalmatia, it is, or was, a custom for a bride to kneel and kiss the threshold of her husband’s home, before crossing it for the first time. Her mother-in-law, or some other near relative of her husband, at the same time presented her with a sieve full of different kinds of grain, nuts, and small fruits, which the bride scattered behind her back as she passed in.[83]