Maiden's or Virgin's GIRDLE. It was a custom among the Greeks and Romans for the husband to untie his bride's girdle. Homer, lib. xi. of his Odyssey, calls the girdle παλινος ζωνη, maid's girdle. Festus relates, that it was made of sheep's wool, and that the husband untied it in bed; he adds, that it was tied in the Herculanean knot; and that the husband unloosed it, as a happy presage of his having as many children as Hercules, who at his death left seventy behind him.
The poets attribute to Venus a particular kind of girdle called cessus, to which they annexed a faculty of inspiring the passion of love.