As to _Macedonia_ there is a passage in _Athenaeus_, quoted from _Hermesianax_ to this effect: ἀλλὰ Μακεδονίης πάσας κατενίσατο λαύρας (But he went through all the alleys of Macedonia), where _Dalechamp_ translates the word λαύρα by brothel, but _Casaubon_ even in his time threw doubt on this rendering.[116] Possibly however this judgement is connected with similar licentious practises among the Macedonians to what we find among the Persians[117], who indulged in sexual intercourse with their own mothers, daughters, etc., and begat children upon them,—a practice which _Euripides_[118] makes the Barbarians generally guilty of.
But if there _were_ actually brothels existing in Macedonia, this would be the less surprising, as its inhabitants may well be reckoned amongst Greeks in many respects.
The Greek knew perfectly the boundary between the physical and the ethical, and sought ever to subordinate the former to the latter. His whole life belonged in the first instance to the State, of it he was bound to be a citizen, and for it to endeavour to produce good citizens. Consequently polygamy early disappeared in Greece, and so too community of wives, a custom which prevailed down to historical times at Sparta only. Monogamy was the first law of marriage, and marriage was the bounden duty of every true citizen[119], to save his family from dying out. But while the Asiatic prided himself on the number of his children, the Greek’s boast was of their excellence. Only with the object of procreating offspring was the Greek husband to rest in the arms of his spouse (ἐπ’ ἀρότῳ παίδων γνησίων—for the sowing, procreation of lawful children), and not to desecrate the holy Torus (marriage-couch) by mere lustfulness. Where this was stirred in him, he ceased to be free; a slave of lust, he must consort only with slave-women, and not with free citizenesses[120]. Nay! even this was permitted solely to avoid greater evils; and illicit coition never ceased to be held as something οὐ καλόν—unseemly[121], particularly when it was indulged in by married men.
It has been shown how under the clearer skies of Greece the Asiatic worship of Venus took on a form more worthy of mankind, how the Greek distinguished his Venus Urania (Heavenly Venus) from the Venus of the rest of the world, the Pandemian (Venus common to all), and so set up a barrier to the flood of dissoluteness,—a barrier however that was little by little broken down in later times. Foreigners, especially the voluptuous inhabitants of Asia, when they saw that the Greek cult did not like their native worship abet their carnal appetites, imported slave-women. These were purchased by the Greeks, and handed over as offerings to the temple of Aphrodité under the title of Temple-servants or “Hieroduli”[122]; and acquainted as they were with the needs of their fellow-countrymen, sought in every way to supply them,—as was in particular the case at Corinth.