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The sacred
precinct was crowded with women waiting to observe the custom. Some
of them had to wait there for years. At Heliopolis or Baalbec in
Syria, famous for the imposing grandeur of its ruined temples, the
custom of the country required that every maiden should prostitute
herself to a stranger at the temple of Astarte, and matrons as well
as maids testified their devotion to the goddess in the same manner.
The emperor Constantine abolished the custom, destroyed the temple,
and built a church in its stead. In Phoenician temples women
prostituted themselves for hire in the service of religion,
believing that by this conduct they propitiated the goddess and won
her favour. "It was a law of the Amorites, that she who was about to
marry should sit in fornication seven days by the gate." At Byblus
the people shaved their heads in the annual mourning for Adonis.
Women who refused to sacrifice their hair had to give themselves up
to strangers on a certain day of the festival, and the money which
they thus earned was devoted to the goddess.


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