ia, Tanit in Carthage, Ashtaroth in
Canaan, Anaitis in Armenia, yet remaining always love, or, more exactly,
what was love in those days.

In Babylon, fronting her temple was a grove in which were dove-cotes,
cisterns, conical stones--the emblems of her worship. Beyond were little
tents before which girls sat, chapleted with cords, burning bran for
perfume, awaiting the will of the first that put a coin in their lap and
in the name of the goddess invited them to her rites. Acceptance was
obligatory. It was obligatory on all women to stop in the grove at least
once. Herodotus, from whom these details are taken, said that the sojourn
of those that were fair was brief, but others less favored lingered
vainly, insulted by the former as they left.[1]

Herodotus is father of history; perhaps too, father of lies. But later
Strabo substantiated his story. There is anterior evidence in the Bible.
There is antecedent testimony on a Nineveh brick. There is the further
corroboration of Justinus, of St. Augustin, and of Eusebius regarding
similar rites in Armenia, in Phoenicia, in Syria, wherever Ishtar
passed.[2]

The forms of the ceremony and the duration of it varied, but the worship,
always the same, was identical with that of the Hindu bayaderes, the
Kama-dasi, literally servants of love, more exactly servants of lust, who,
for hire, yielded themselves to any comer, and whose dishonorarium the
clergy took.

From Phoenicia the worship passed to Greece. Among local articles of
commerce were girls with whom the Phoenicians furnished harems. One of
their agencies was at Cythera. From the adjacent waters Venus was rumored
to have emerged. The rumor had truth for basis. But the emergence occurred
in the form of a stone brought there on a Phoenician galley. The fact,
cited by Maximus Tyrius, numismatics confirm. On the old coins of Paphos
it was as a stone that Venus appeared, a stone emblematic and phallic,
similar to those that stood in the Babylon grove.

Venus was even otherwise Phoenician. In Semitic speech girls were called
_benoth_, and at Carthage the tents in which the worship occurred were
termed _succoth benoth_. In old texts B was frequently changed to V. From
benoth came venoth and the final theta being pronounced, as was customary,
like sigma, venos resulted and so appears on a Roman medal, that of Julia
Augusta, wife of Septimius Severus, where Venus is written Venos.

Meanwhile on the banks of the Indus the stone