Note 271.1 — Chapter III · NOTES

The first to insist emphatically on the necessity of their distinction was Mr. Hartland, in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, pp. 190-191; but he has there, I think, wrongly classified—through a misunderstanding of a phrase in Aelian—the Lydian custom that Herodotus (1, 93) and Aelian (Var. Hist., iv. 1) refer to; both these writers mention the custom of the women of Lydia practising prostitution before marriage. Aelian does not mention the motive that Herodotus assigns, the collection of a dowry; neither associates it with religion. Aelian merely adds that when once married the Lydian women were virtuous; this need have nothing to do with the Mylitta-rite.