[87] Why do they part the hair of brides with the point of a spear?[201]
Does this symbolize the marriage of the first Roman wives[202] by violence with attendant war, or do the wives thus learn, now that they are mated to brave and warlike men, to welcome an unaffected, unfeminine, and simple mode of beautification? Even as Lycurgus,[203] by giving orders to make the doors and roofs of houses with the saw and the axe only, and to use absolutely no other tool, banished all over-refinement and extravagance.
Or does this procedure hint at the manner of their separation, that with steel alone can their marriage be dissolved?
Or is it that most of the marriage customs were connected with Juno?[204] Now the spear is commonly held to be sacred to Juno, and most of her statues represent her leaning on a spear, and the goddess herself is surnamed Quirite; for the men of old used to call the spear curis; wherefore they further relate that Enyalius is called Quirinus by the Romans.[205]