agree well together, the law was laid down that he should pay back
the money. It was allowed also for any one who wished it to come from
another village and buy. This then was their most honourable custom; it
does not however still exist at the present time, but they have found
out of late another way, in order that the men may not ill-treat them or
take them to another city: 205 for since the time when being conquered
they were oppressed and ruined, each one of the common people when he is
in want of livelihood prostitutes his female children.

197. Next in wisdom to that, is this other custom which was established
206 among them:--they bear out the sick into the market-place; for of
physicians they make no use. So people come up to the sick man and give
advice about his disease, if any one himself has ever suffered anything
like that which the sick man has, or saw any other who had suffered
it; and coming near they advise and recommend those means by which they
themselves got rid of a like disease or seen some other get rid of it:
and to pass by the sick man in silence is not permitted to them, nor
until one has asked what disease he has.

198. They bury their dead in honey, and their modes of lamentation
are similar to those used in Egypt. And whenever a Babylonian man has
intercourse with his wife, he sits by incense offered, and his wife does
the same on the other side, and when it is morning they wash themselves,
both of them, for they will touch no vessel until they have washed
themselves: and the Arabians do likewise in this matter.

199. Now the most shameful of the customs of the Babylonians is as
follows: every woman of the country must sit down in the precincts 207
of Aphrodite once in her life and have commerce with a man who is a
stranger: and many women who do not deign to mingle with the rest,
because they are made arrogant by wealth, drive to the temple with pairs
of horses in covered carriages, and so take their place, and a large
number of attendants follow after them; but the greater number do
thus,--in the sacred enclosure of Aphrodite sit great numbers of women
with a wreath of cord about their heads; some come and others go; and
there are passages in straight lines going between the women in every
direction, 208 through which the strangers pass by and make their
choice. Here when a woman takes her seat she does not depart again to
her house until one of the strangers has thrown a silver coin int