The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism [1911] - Get a Free Blog

NOTES SYRIA. 247
futable testimony. Strabo, for instance, whose great-uncle
was arch-priest of Comana, mentions it in connection with
that city, (XII, 3, 36, p. 559 C), and he manifests no surprise.
The history of religion teaches many stranger facts ; this one,
however, is disconcerting. The attempt has been made to see
in it a relic of the primitive promiscuity or polyandry, or a
persistence of "sexual hospitality," ("No custom is more
widely spread than the providing for a guest a female com
panion, who is usually a wife or daughter of the host," says
Wake, Serpent Worship, 1888, p. 158) ; or the substitution
of union with a man for union with the god (Gruppe, Griech.
Mythol., p. 915). But these hypotheses do not explain the
peculiarities of the religious custom as it is described by more
reliable authors. They insist upon the fact that the girls
were dedicated to the temple service while virgins, and that
after having had strangers for lovers, they married in their
own country. Thus Strabo (XI, 14, 16, p. 532 C.) narrates
in connection with the temple of Anaitis in Acilisena, that
6ir/a.Tpa oi ETntyaviaraTOL TOV eOvov? dviepovot Trapdevove,
ai<; vofio^ earl
iacuc TTO^VV xpovov trapa ry 6eti yUfra ravra tiidoeOat Trpof
, OVK. cnra^tovvTo^ ry roiavry GWOIKEIV ovtievof. Herodotus (I,
93), who relates about the same thing of the Lydian women,
adds that they acquired a dowry in that manner ;
an inscription
at Tralles (Bull corr. hell, VII, 1885, p. 276) actually men
tions a descendant of a sacred prostitute (K irpoyovuv -rra\\aKt-
SWP) who had temporarily filled the same office ( TraXXa/ceuo-acra
/caret XP*?<^" Au). Even at Thebes in Egypt there existed a
similar custom with striking local peculiarities
in the time of
Strabo (XVII, I, 46), and traces of it seem to have been
found in Greece among the Locrians (Vurtheim, DC Aiacis
origine, Leyden, 1907). Every Algerian traveler knows how
the girls of the Ouled-Nai l earn their dowry in the ksours and
the cities, before they go back to their tribes to marry, and
Doutte (Notes sur I Islam maghrebicn, les Marabouts, Extr.
Rev. hist, dcs relig., XL-XLI, Paris, 1900), has connected these
usages with the old Semitic prostitution, but his thesis has
been attacked and the historical circumstances of the arrival
of the Ouled-Nail in Algeria in the eleventh century render
it very doubtful (Note by Basset). It seems certain (I do
not know whether this explanation has ever been offered)