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).
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.”