Such institutions mark the sharpest antagonism between the early religious sentiment of the East and the West. Of no European State is there any record, religious or other, that the sacrifice before marriage of a woman’s virginity to a mortal was at any time regarded as demanded by temple ritual. Such a rite was abhorrent to the genuine Hellenic, as it was to the Hebraic, spirit; and only in later times do we find one or two Hellenic cult-centres catching the taint of the Oriental tradition: while such legends as that of Melanippos and Komaitho and the story of Laokoon’s sin express the feeling of horror which any sexual licence in a temple aroused in the Greek.[275.3] {276} It is imperative to try to understand the original purpose or significance of the Semitic and Anatolian rites that we have been dealing with. To regard them as the early Christian and some modern writers have done, as mere examples of unbridled Oriental lust masquerading in the guise of religion, is a false and unjust view. According to Herodotus, the same society that ordained this sacrifice of virginity upon the daughters of families maintained in other respects a high standard of virtue, which appears also attested by Babylonian religious and secular documents. Modern anthropology has handled the problem with greater insight and seriousness; but certain current explanations are not convincing. To take the rite described by Herodotus first, which is always to be distinguished from the permanent institution of “hierodulai” in the sense of temple-harlots: Mannhardt, who was the first to apply modern science to the problem, explained it as a development of vegetation-ritual.[276.1] Aphrodite and Adonis, Ishtar and Tammuz, represent vegetation, and their yearly union causes general fertility; the women are playing the part of the goddess, and the stranger represents Adonis! The Babylonian rite, then, is partly religious μιμησις, the human acting of a divine drama, partly religious magic good for the crops. But in spite of Mannhardt’s great and real services to science, his vegetation-theory leads him often astray, and only one who was desperately defending a thesis would explain that stranger, a necessary personage in the ritual at Babylon, Byblos, Cyprus, and Baalbec, as the native god. There is no kind of reason for connecting the Babylonian rite with Tammuz, or for supposing that the women were representing {277} the goddess,[277.1] or that their act directly influenced the crops, except in the sense that all due performance of religious ceremonies has been considered at certain stages of belief as favouring the prosperity of the land. Sir William Ramsay, in his _Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia_,[277.2] would explain the custom as preserving the tradition of the communism of women before regular marriage was instituted. Dr. Frazer, who has dealt more fully with the question, accepts this explanation,[277.3]