IMMODESTY AT BABYLON.
That modesty and chastity, which we now esteem as the chief ornament of the female character, does not appear in times of remote antiquity to have been much regarded by either sex. At Babylon, the capital of the Assyrian empire, it was so little valued, that a law of the country even obliged every woman once in her life to depart from it. This abominable law, which, it is said, was promulgated by an oracle, ordained, That every woman should once in her life repair to the temple of Venus; that on her arrival there, her head should be crowned with flowers, and in that attire, she should wait till some stranger performed with her the rites sacred to the goddess of debauchery.
This temple was constructed with a great many winding galleries appropriated to the reception of the women, and the strangers who, allured by debauchery, never failed to assemble there in great numbers, being allowed to choose any woman they thought proper from among those who came there in obedience to the law. When the stranger accosted the object of his choice, he was obliged to present her with some pieces of money, nor was she at liberty to refuse either these, or the request of the stranger who offered them, whatever was the [p174] value of the money, or however mean or disagreeable the donor. These preliminaries being settled, they retired together to fulfil the law, after which the woman returned and offered the goddess the sacrifice prescribed by custom, and then was at liberty to return home. Nor was this custom entirely confined to the Babylonians; in the island of Cyprus they sent young women at stated times to the sea-shore, where they prostituted themselves to Venus, that they might be chaste the rest of their lives. In some other countries, a certain number only were doomed to prostitution, as it is supposed, by way of a bribe, to induce the goddess of debauchery to save the rest.
When a woman had once entered the temple of Venus, she was not allowed to depart from it till she had fulfilled the law: and it frequently happened that those to whom nature had been less indulgent than to others, remained there a long time before any person offered to perform with them the condition of their release. A custom, we think, some times alluded to in scripture, and expressly delineated in the book of Baruch: “The women also, with cords about them, sitting in the ways, burn bran for perfume; but, if any of them, drawn by some that passeth by, lie with him, she reproacheth her fellow that she was not thought worthy as herself, nor her cord broken.” Though this infamous law was at first strictly observed by all the women of Babylon, yet it would seem that, in length of time, they grew ashamed of, and in many cases dispensed with it; for we are informed that women of the superior ranks of life, who were not willing literally to fulfil the law, were allowed a kind of evasion; they were carried in litters to the gates of the temple, where, having dismissed all their attendants, they entered alone, presented themselves [p175] before the statue of the goddess, and returned home. Possibly this was done by the assistance of a bribe, to those who had the care of the temple.