Here is the History at once of Man individually and of whole Peoples. Over the Temple-worship of Aphrodité also impended such a crisis; and sooner or later the holy courts of Venus Urania (Heavenly Venus) changed into the Lupanar of Venus Vulgivaga (Brothel of Venus of the Streets).
§ 3.
A precise knowledge of the extension of the Venus-cult in chronological order would readily supply us the means of following up historically the moral deterioration of the Peoples of Antiquity; but so long as we do not possess this, History cannot be expected to give us anything of great value. All that we are for the present in a position to give, pertinent to the object we aim at, is as follows:
“The worship of this Urania,” says Pausanias[18], “the Assyrians first introduced amongst themselves, after the Assyrians the Paphians in Cyprus[19], and among the Phoenicians[20] the inhabitants of Ascalon in Palestine. From the Phoenicians the inhabitants of Cythera[21] learned to know and worship her. At Athene Aegeus introduced her worship.” It was at Babylon then that the cult of Venus originated as Mylitta worship, spread over the inland parts to Mesopotamia as the Sabaean[22] religion, and was passed on by the Phoenicians to the seaboard peoples as Astarté-worship. For at the spot where this cult first arose, it lasted longest in its original purity, and Herodotus[23] could report how at Babylon the daughters of the country were compelled once in their life-time to give themselves for money to a strange man to win the favour of the goddess, then to return to their dwelling all the more virtuous for the sin, and neither promises nor gifts, however great these might be, availed ever again to draw them into the arms of a stranger. Later indeed it was different even here, perhaps through the influence of the Phoenicians, who had manifold dealings with them. For Herodotus himself relates elsewhere (Bk. I. 196), that after the capture of Babylon by the Persians, the poorer classes, dreading the forcible abduction of their daughters, if means of subsistence failed them, made them harbour-wenches[24]. And accordingly Q. Curtius[25] felt bound to write of Babylon:
“Nihil urbis eius corruptius moribus, nihil ad irritandas illiciendasque immodicas voluptates instructius. Liberos coniugesque cum hospitibus stupro coire, modo pretium flagitii detur, parentes maritique patiuntur.... Feminarum convivia ineuntium in principio modestus est habitus, dein summa quaeque amicula exuunt, paulatimque pudorem profanant: ad ultimum ... ima corporum velamenta proiiciunt; nec meretricum hoc dedecus est sed matronarum virginumque apud quas comitas habetur vulgati corporis vilitas.”
(Nothing can well be more corrupt than the manners of this City, nothing more artfully adapted to excite the passions and allure to voluptuous excesses. Strangers are permitted by parents and husbands, provided the price of shame is forthcoming, to have lustful intercourse with their children and their wives.... At their first entrance to the banquet-room the women’s dress is modest, presently they remove their outer robes one by one, and little by little violate all modesty, ... at the last stripping off the innermost coverings of their persons. And this is no mere abomination of harlots, but the habit of matrons and maids, who consider that in thus making themselves cheap and exposing their bodies they are showing courtesy). This custom we find again carried still further amongst the Armenians, who Strabo[26][27] says consecrate their daughters for some considerable length of time to Anaitis, and only after this suffer them to marry. Herodotus[28] relates the same custom of the Lydians, degenerated in the same way as had been the case in later times at Babylon, for here too the lower classes used to abandon their daughters to prostitution for a livelihood. Still in its original purity the usage reached the Phoenicians[29], but with them also would seem to have early degenerated, although in particular towns of Phoenicia the practice appears to have been followed only under certain circumstances. Lucian[30] relates that the women, of Byblus, where was a Temple of Ἀφροδίτη βυβλίη (Venus of Byblos), if they would not allow their hair to be cut off at the Funeral-feast of Adonis, were bound in honour of Venus for one whole day to abandon their bodies to strangers. Among the Carthaginians[31] also, as in Cyprus[32], maidens had to earn their dowry, and the Tyrant Dionysius introduced the same custom, no doubt with a secondary design of a profit for himself, amongst the people of Locri.[33]
§ 4.
As to the reason for this custom, one might be found in the opinion that prevailed almost universally in Antiquity amongst the Asiatic peoples, that the first-fruits of everything were consecrate to the Deity, and accordingly the virgin’s hymen must be offered up to Venus. But this will not in any way explain why the self-surrender must nearly always take place with a Stranger (ἀνδρὶ ξείνῳ) of all people in the world. Heyne[34] and Fr. Jacobs[35], who paid special attention to this custom, are it is true agreed in thinking that a religious motive lay at the bottom of it, though they differ in their conception of what it was; but neither of them hit on the right explanation. A careful distinction must be made between the Ceremony and the Act of the self-surrender. The first was a matter of religion, the second not; for the women were conveyed at Babylon outside the Temple-precincts, in Cyprus to the sea-shore, for the purpose of yielding their bodies to strangers[36]. Had the act been regarded at that period as a religious one, it would of necessity have been practised, as was the case before and again later, in the Temple or at least within its precincts, and of course with fellow-countrymen, strangers not being allowed to take part in any native religious practice.
The discrepancies however soon disappear if it is remembered that in Antiquity, as to this day amongst many savage peoples, not only was the menstrual blood (of which more fully later) held to be impure, but also the blood that flowed, when a virgin was deflowered, from the rupture of the hymen, and consequently the act of defloration as well. The same held good in the case of coition with widows, because it was believed that with them the menstrual blood accumulated in greater quantity, then was discharged on occasion of the first coition, and must necessarily cause injury to the man. This also explains why Herodotus (loco citato) says γυναῖκες (women) and not simply κόραι or παρθένοι (girls, virgins); and removes at once Heyne’s doubts (p. 32) and the difficulties raised by Heeren[37].
The dwellers on the sea-coast, who enjoyed more active intercourse with the rest of the world, left to strangers the polluting act of defloration, whilst among inland peoples this office was undertaken for those of the higher classes[38] by the priests, or else an idol, specially appropriated for the purpose, a Priapus or Lingam (see later) was employed. Subsequently several mistaken reasons may well have been alleged for the custom; the only idea that continued to be consistently held was that defloration was not a proper function of the bridegroom. It was rather made a matter of honour, and accordingly brides offered themselves first to the wedding-guests, as among the Nasomonians in Africa[39] and in the Balearic Islands[40], where the right of preference went by age.