Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 Sex in...

E. Richard, La Prostitution à Paris, 1890, p. 44. It may be questioned whether publicity or notoriety should form an essential part of the definition; it seems, however, to be involved, or the prostitute cannot obtain clients. Reuss states that she must, in addition, be absolutely without means of subsistence; that is certainly not essential. Nor is it necessary, as the Digest insisted, that the act should be performed "without pleasure;" that may be as it will, without affecting the prostitutional nature of the act.

H. Schurtz, Altersklassen und Männerbünde, 1902, p. 190. In this work Schurtz brings together (pp. 189-201) some examples of the germs of prostitution among primitive peoples. Many facts and references are given by Westermarck (History of Human Marriage, pp. 66 et seq., and Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. ii, pp. 441 et seq.).

Bachofen (more especially in his Mutterrecht and Sage von Tanaquil) argued that even religious prostitution sprang from the resistance of primitive instincts to the individualization of love. Cf. Robertson Smith, Religion of Semites, second edition, p. 59.

Whatever the reason may be, there can be no doubt that there is a widespread tendency for religion and prostitution to be associated; it is possibly to some extent a special case of that general connection between the religious and sexual impulses which has been discussed elsewhere (Appendix C to vol. i of these Studies). Thus A. B. Ellis, in his book on The Ewe-speaking Peoples of West Africa (pp. 124, 141) states that here women dedicated to a god become promiscuous prostitutes. W. G. Sumner (Folkways, Ch. XVI) brings together many facts concerning the wide distribution of religious prostitution.

Herodotus, Bk. I, Ch. CXCIX; Baruch, Ch. VI, p. 43. Modern scholars confirm the statements of Herodotus from the study of Babylonian literature, though inclined to deny that religious prostitution occupied so large a place as he gives it. A tablet of the Gilgamash epic, according to Morris Jastrow, refers to prostitutes as attendants of the goddess Ishtar in the city Uruk (or Erech), which was thus a centre, and perhaps the chief centre, of the rites described by Herodotus (Morris Jastrow, The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, 1898, p. 475). Ishtar was the goddess of fertility, the great mother goddess, and the prostitutes were priestesses, attached to her worship, who took part in ceremonies intended to symbolize fertility. These priestesses of Ishtar were known by the general name Kadishtu, "the holy ones" (op. cit., pp. 485, 660).

It is usual among modern writers to associate Aphrodite Pandemos, rather than Ourania, with venal or promiscuous sexuality, but this is a complete mistake, for the Aphrodite Pandemos was purely political and had no sexual significance. The mistake was introduced, perhaps intentionally, by Plato. It has been suggested that that arch-juggler, who disliked democratic ideas, purposely sought to pervert and vulgarize the conception of Aphrodite Pandemos (Farnell, Cults of Greek States, vol. ii, p. 660).

I do not say an earlier "promiscuity," for the theory of a primitive sexual promiscuity is now widely discredited, though there can be no reasonable doubt that the early prevalence of mother-right was more favorable to the sexual freedom of women than the later patriarchal system. Thus in very early Egyptian days a woman could give her favors to any man she chose by sending him her garment, even if she were married. In time the growth of the rights of men led to this being regarded as criminal, but the priestesses of Amen retained the privilege to the last, as being under divine protection (Flinders Petrie, Egyptian Tales, pp. 10, 48).

It should be added that Farnell ("The Position of Women in Ancient Religion," Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, 1904, p. 88) seeks to explain the religious prostitution of Babylonia as a special religious modification of the custom of destroying virginity before marriage in order to safeguard the husband from the mystic dangers of defloration. E. S. Hartland, also ("Concerning the Rite at the Temple of Mylitta," Anthropological Essays Presented to E. B. Tyler, p. 189), suggests that this was a puberty rite connected with ceremonial defloration. This theory is not, however, generally accepted by Semitic scholars.

The girls of this tribe, who are remarkably pretty, after spending two or three years in thus amassing a little dowry, return home to marry, and are said to make model wives and mothers. They are described by Bertherand in Parent-Duchâtelet, La Prostitution à Paris, vol. ii, p. 539.

In Abyssinia (according to Fiaschi, British Medical Journal, March 13, 1897), where prostitution has always been held in high esteem, the prostitutes, who are now subject to medical examination twice a week, still attach no disgrace to their profession, and easily find husbands afterwards. Potter (Sohrab and Rustem, pp. 168 et seq.) gives references as regards peoples, widely dispersed in the Old World and the New, among whom the young women have practiced prostitution to obtain a dowry.

At Tralles, in Lydia, even in the second century A.D., as Sir W. M. Ramsay notes (Cities of Phrygia, vol. i, pp. 94, 115), sacred prostitution was still an honorable practice for women of good birth who "felt themselves called upon to live the divine life under the influence of divine inspiration."

The gradual secularization of prostitution from its earlier religious form has been traced by various writers (see, e.g., Dupouey, La Prostitution dans l'Antiquité). The earliest complimentary reference to the Hetaira in literature is to be found, according to Benecke (Antimachus of Colophon, p. 36), in Bacchylides.

Pierre Dufour, Histoire de la Prostitution, vol. ii, Chs. XIX-XX. The real author of this well-known history of prostitution, which, though not scholarly in its methods, brings together a great mass of interesting information, is said to be Paul Lacroix.