PLAIN OF MARATHON. 21 
At Brauron, the yllhenian virgins were con- chap. 
secrated to Diana, in a solemn festival which 
took place once in every five years. No 
woman was allowed to marry until she had 
undergone this ceremony; the nature of which 
has never been explained. All that we know 
of it is this: the solemnity was conducted by 
ten officiating priests, who offered a goat in 
sacrifice; the virgins were under ten years of 
age; and they wore yellow gowns; which cir- 
cumstance of their dress is the more remark- 
able, because the laws respecting festivals 
ordained, that, at the Panathencea, no person 
should wear apparel dyed with colours'. A 
yellow vest is a mark of sanctity with the 
Calmuck tribes; among whom the priests are 
distinguished by wearing robes of this colour*. 
At this festival, they sang the poems of Homer. 
In the Brauronian temple there was preserved, 
until the second Persian war, the famous image 
belonging to the Tauri, which, from some 
two mountains ; Pentele ran^injc on our right and on the left one 
of Diacria, the region extending across from Motmt Pnrncs to 
Brauron." (See Trav. in Greece, p. 160. Or/. ITTG.) Chandler 
further says, that tlie two mountains are divided by a wide and deep 
water-course, the bed of a river or torrent antiently named Erasinus. 
(3) Luciaji, Nigrino. See Potter's ^rchaol, vol. I. p. 145. Land. 
1751. 
(4) See Vol. I. of these Travels, p. 430". Octavo Edition. 
