Note 266.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF (continued 2)

Among the religious rites of antiquity there was none more alien to modern feeling than the sacrifice of chastity by every Babylonian woman at the temple of Mylitta. It is described first and in most detail by Herodotus, whose denunciation of it shows that to the Greeks of the fifth century B.C. it was as abhorrent as it is to us. According to this account, every woman once in her life was required to sit down in the precincts of the temple of Mylitta wearing a wreath of cord about her head, and there to wait until a stranger should throw a silver coin into her lap and summon her with ritual words in the name of the goddess to follow him. She was not allowed to refuse, but was compelled to follow the first man who threw, and to have sexual intercourse with him outside the temple. She might then depart to her home, her duty to the goddess being fulfilled.266.1 The historian lets fall the observation that there was a similar custom in some places in Cyprus. This has been supposed to be referred to by Justin, who wrote probably after the establishment of Christianity, but whose work consists of selections from Trogus Pompeius, a lost writer of the Augustan age. He reports that it was the Cypriote custom to send maidens before their marriage on certain days to seek their dowry by prostitution on the seashore, and to pay the offerings to Venus for their future chastity. Dido on her way to Carthage touched at the island at the very time, and took on board her fleet eighty of these damsels, to be wives to her followers and assist in peopling the city she was going to found.267.1 We shall further consider Justin’s statement hereafter. For the moment we pass on to Heliopolis (Baalbec), where, the ecclesiastical historian Socrates affirms, virgins were offered in prostitution to strangers.267.2 He does not, any more than Justin, connect this with a temple or a divinity; but from Sozomen we gather that it was a religious observance, inasmuch as the prostitution of virgins prior to their marriage is stated to have been abolished by Constantine when he destroyed the temple of Aphrodite.267.3 A similar custom, according to Ælian, was followed by the Lydians. And he expressly says that when once the rite had been performed the woman remained ever afterwards chaste, nor would a repetition be forgiven her on any plea.267.4 Herodotus, however, states that the daughters of the common people in Lydia earned their dowries by a life of prostitution.267.5 The two writers are obviously referring to two different customs. A third custom distinct from either is mentioned by Strabo as practised by the Armenians, among whom even the highest families of the nation consecrated their virgin daughters to the service of the goddess Anaitis, to remain as prostitutes at her temple before their marriage.267.6