[148] Jeremias, Izdubar-Nimrod, p. 60.
[149] Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch, p. 267 sq.
[150] Curtiss, Primitive Semitic Religion To-day, p. 155.
[151] Farnell, ‘Sociological Hypotheses concerning the Position of Women in Ancient Religion,’ in Archiv f. Religionswiss. vii. 88.
[152] Herodotus, i. 199.
[153] Supra, [i. ch. xxiv.]
[154] Since the present chapter was in type, some fresh attempts have been made to explain this religious prostitution. Sir J. G. Frazer (Adonis Attis Osiris, p. 23 sq.) regards it as a rite intended to ensure the fruitfulness of the ground and the increase of man and beast on the principle of homœopathic magic. A very similar opinion has been expressed by Dr. Havelock Ellis (‘Ursprung und Entwicklung der Prostitution,’ in Mutterschutz, iii. fasc. 1 sq.). According to Mr. Hartland, again (‘Concerning the Rite at the Temple of Mylitta,’ in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, p. 189 sqq.), it was a puberty rite involving a sacrifice of virginity to which every woman was subjected. [My own theory has subsequently been accepted by van Gennep, Les rites de passage, p. 242 sq.]
Among ourselves an act of incontinence assumes a different aspect if one of the parties, either the man or the woman, is married. Involving a breach of faith, adultery is an offence against him or her to whom faith is due, and at the same time the seducer commits an offence against the husband of the adulteress. But here again our own views are not universally shared.
Although it is hard to understand that the seducer could ever be regarded as guiltless, we are told that among a few peoples adultery is not held to be wrong;[155] and Mr. Morgan states that among the Iroquois “punishment was inflicted upon the woman alone, who was supposed to be the only offender.”[156] But these cases are certainly quite exceptional. In a savage tribe a seducer may be thankful if he escapes by paying to the injured husband the value of the bride or some other fine, or if the penalty is reduced to a flogging, to his head being shaved, his ears cut off, one of his eyes destroyed, or his legs speared. Very commonly he has to pay with his life. We have seen that even among many peoples who generally prohibit self-redress an adulterer may be put to death by the aggrieved husband, especially if he be caught flagrante delicto;[157] and in other cases he may be subject to capital punishment, in the proper sense of the word.[158] In Albania, even in our days, custom not only allows, but compels, the injured husband to kill the adulterer.[159] Hebrew law enjoined the man who committed adultery with another man’s wife to be put to death;[160] and Christian legislators followed the example. Constantine celebrated his new zeal for the sacramental idea of marriage by establishing the punishment of death for the seducer;[161] adultery was in point of heinousness assimilated to murder, idolatry, and sorcery.[162] Various mediæval law-books punished the seducer with death;[163] whilst in Scotland notorious and manifest adultery was made capital as late as 1563.[164] This extreme severity, however, has been followed by extreme leniency. In Scotland, though adultery kept its place in the statute-book as a heinous and in some cases a capital crime, prosecution for it had ceased for many years before the time of Baron Hume;[165] and in England it is no crime at all in the eyes of the law, only an ecclesiastical offence.
[155] Davis, El Gringo, p. 221 sq. (Indians of New Mexico). Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 146 (Cherokees). Krasheninnikoff, History of Kamschatka, p. 204. Prejevalsky, Mongolia, i. 70 (Mongols). Colquhoun, Amongst the Shans, p. 75 (Yendalines, one of the Karen tribes). Chanler, op. cit. p. 317 (Rendile in Eastern Africa). Lichtenstein, Travels in Southern Africa, ii. 48 (Bushmans).