Every woman had brought from her own country a little image of the Goddess, and as it stood there upon the altar of the house it was worshipped by each one in her own tongue. Lakmî Ashtoreth, Venus, Iskhtar, Freia, Mylitta, and Cypris were some of the holy names of their Divinity of Pleasure. Some worshipped the divinity in the symbolical shapes of a sea pebble, a conical stone, or a large prickly shell. In many of the houses there was upon a wooden stand a rough statuette with thin arms, large breasts, and huge thighs. They placed a myrtle branch at the feet of the idol, strewed the altar with rose-leaves, and burnt a grain of incense for each prayer which was granted. The Goddess was the confidante of all their sorrows, the witness of all their labours, and the supposed cause of all their pleasure. At the courtesan’s death the image was placed in her fragile coffin as a guardian of her tomb.
The most beautiful of these girls came from the kingdoms of Asia. Every year vessels bearing to Alexandria gifts from tributaries or allies landed besides their cargoes a hundred virgins chosen by the priests for the service of the sacred garden. They came from Mysia, Crete, Phrygia, Babylon, and the banks of the Ganges, and there were also Jewesses among them. Some were fair of skin with impassive faces and inflexible breasts; others were dark as the earth after rain, and had gold rings through their noses, and dark hair hanging down upon their shoulders. Some came from still more distant lands; they were slender, quiet little creatures, whose language no one understood and who looked like yellow monkeys. Their eyes were long, and their straight black hair was grotesquely arranged. These girls spent the whole of their lives like lost and frightened animals. They knew the gestures of love but declined to kiss upon the mouth. They amused themselves by playing childish games.
In a meadow apart, the fair and rosy daughters of the North lived together sleeping upon the grass. These were women from Sarmatia with triple-plaited hair, robust limbs, and square shoulders, who made themselves garlands of the branches of trees and wrestled among themselves for amusement; there were flat-nosed hairy Scythians and gigantic Teutons who terrified the Egyptians with their hair which was lighter than an old man’s and their flesh which was softer than a child’s; there were Gauls like animals, who laughed without reason, and young Celts with sea-green eyes, who never went out naked.
The women of Iberia, too, who had swarthy breasts, spent their days together. They had heavy masses of hair which was skilfully arranged and did not remove the hairs from their bodies. Their firm skins and strong limbs were much in favour with the Alexandrians. They were as often employed as dancers as taken for mistresses.
In the shade of the palm-trees dwelt the daughters of Africa, the Numidians veiled in white, the Carthaginians clad in black gauze, and Negresses clad in many-coloured costumes.
There were fourteen hundred women.
When a woman once entered the sacred garden, she never left it till the first day of her old age came upon her. She gave to the temple half of her gains and the rest sufficed for her food and perfumes.
They were not slaves and each one really possessed one of the Terrace houses; but all were not equally favoured and the more fortunate often purchased houses near their own which the owners sold to save themselves from growing thin through starvation. The latter then removed the image of their Divinity into the park and found an altar consisting of a flat stone, near which they took up their abode. The poor people knew this and sought out the women who slept in the open air near their altars; but sometimes they were neglected even by the poor, and then the unfortunate girls united in their misery, two and two, in a passionate friendship which became almost conjugal love, and shared their misfortunes.
Those without friends offered themselves as slaves to their more fortunate companions. They were forbidden to have in their service more than twelve of these poor girls, but these poor courtesans are mentioned as having the maximum number which was composed of a selection from many races.
If a courtesan bore a son, the child was taken into the precincts of the temple for the service of her divinity. When a daughter was born she was consecrated to the service of the Goddess. The first day of her life her symbolical marriage with the son of Dionysius was celebrated. Later she entered the Didascalion, a great school situated behind the temple where little girls learned in seven classes the theory and method of all the erotic arts; the glance, the embrace, the movements of the body, caresses and the secrets of the kiss. The pupil chose the day of her first experience because desire is a command from the Goddess which must not be disobeyed; on that day she received a house on the Terrace; and some of these children, though not yet nubile, were the most popular of all.