Note 270.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF (continued 2)

Now, if the interpretation in question be suitable for any of these customs, it is more suitable for the single rite such as that at the temple of Mylitta than for the exercise of prostitution over an extended period; and it is to this rite that I desire more particularly to call attention. I need hardly observe that the explanation of the rite as an expiation for marriage does not by any means follow of necessity from the theory of primitive promiscuity. On the contrary it overlooks one of the peculiar features of the rite. Alike at Babylon, at Heliopolis, and apparently at Cyprus (if Cyprus be a case in point) the act has to be accomplished with a stranger. If it were a forfeit rendered to the general body of men, who might have had a claim to temporary union but for the institution of marriage, or if it were a formal witness of that claim, it would seem, prima facie, more natural that it should be accomplished with some one or more of the claimants, that is to say, with a member or members of the same community. A similar rite of intercourse with a stranger was practised, as Lucian relates, at Byblus. There it was the custom at the mourning for Adonis to perform the well-known mourning rite of cutting off the hair. Any woman who refused to do this was required to exhibit herself on one day of the festival and undergo prostitution to one of the strangers who resorted thither, handing over the price to the goddess called by Lucian the Byblian Aphrodite.270.1 The rite as there practised therefore was, at all events in the second century A.D., an alternative to the dedication of hair: it was a redemption for the tresses that should have been sacrificed. Thus the woman would repeat the expiation once a year, whether married or single, so long as she was unwilling to shear her locks, or preferred the alternative sacrifice of her chastity. There is no evidence that it ever had anything to do with marriage; it certainly had not when Lucian wrote.