worshipper herself. This has been pointed out by Dr. Westermarck,
who remarks that the words spoken to the woman by her partner as
he gives her the coin--"May the goddess be auspicious to
thee!"--themselves indicate that the object of the act was to
insure her fertility, and he refers also to the fact that
strangers frequently had a semi-supernatural character, and their
benefits a specially efficacious character (Westermarck, _Origin
and Development of the Moral Ideas_, vol. ii, p. 446). It may be
added that the rite of Mylitta thus became analogous with another
Mediterranean rite, in which the act of simulating intercourse
with the representative of a god, or his image, ensured a woman's
fertility. This is the rite practiced by the Egyptians of Mendes,
in which a woman went through the ceremony of simulated
intercourse with the sacred goat, regarded as the representative
of a deity of Pan-like character (Herodotus, Bk. ii, Ch. XLVI;
and see Dulaure, _Des Divinites Generatrices_, Ch. II; cf. vol. v
of these _Studies_, "Erotic Symbolism," Sect. IV). This rite was
maintained by Roman women, in connection with the statues of
Priapus, to a very much later date, and St. Augustine mentions
how Roman matrons placed the young bride on the erect member of
Priapus (_De Civitate Dei_, Bk. iii, Ch. IX). The idea evidently
running through this whole group of phenomena is that the deity,
or the representative or even mere image of the deity, is able,
through a real or simulated act of intercourse, to confer on the
worshipper a portion of its own exalted generative activity.

At a later period, in Corinth, prostitutes were still the priestesses of
Venus, more or less loosely attached to her temples, and so long as that
was the case they enjoyed a considerable degree of esteem. At this stage,
however, we realize that religious prostitution was developing a
utilitarian side. These temples flourished chiefly in sea-coast towns, in
islands, in large cities to which many strangers and sailors came. The
priestesses of Cyprus burnt incense on her altars and invoked her sacred
aid, but at the same time Pindar addresses them as "young girls who
welcome all strangers and give them hospitality." Side by side with the
religious significance of the act of generation the needs of men far from
home were already beginning to be definitely recognized.