Many customs, sometimes born of widely differing motives, converge in a similarity of expression. Hence it is impossible in the present state of our knowledge dogmatically to assert a single origin for practices of a like character extending over so wide an area as those we have just passed in review. They are the expression of the psychological reaction caused by the shock of death and the consequent breach of the circle of kinship or other social bonds. The taboo results from the bewilderment and terror caused by the entry of death into the circle. The conduct and garb of the mourners are the outcome of grief and sympathy, but also of fear. That fear has for its object survivors who have it in their {265} power to involve the mourners in even a more terrible doom by an accusation of witchcraft. Even more, it has regard to death itself, and to the inimical designs of him whose earthly life has been severed, and who has thereby been converted into an envious, and if not a malicious, at least a peevish and easily angered, being, armed by his death with greater, because more mysterious, powers. Mourning garb is often a device to secure his compassion; it is often a defence against his overt attacks; but on the whole tangible proof is lacking that it is a disguise to deceive him. THE RITE AT THE TEMPLE OF MYLITTA {266} Among the religious rites of antiquity there was none more alien to modern feeling than the sacrifice of chastity by every Babylonian woman at the temple of Mylitta. It is described first and in most detail by Herodotus, whose denunciation of it shows that to the Greeks of the fifth century B.C. it was as abhorrent as it is to us. According to this account, every woman once in her life was required to sit down in the precincts of the temple of Mylitta wearing a wreath of cord about her head, and there to wait until a stranger should throw a silver coin into her lap and summon her with ritual words in the name of the goddess to follow him. She was not allowed to refuse, but was compelled to follow the first man who threw, and to have sexual intercourse with him outside the temple. She might then depart to her home, her duty to the goddess being fulfilled.[266.1] The historian lets fall the observation that there was a similar custom in some places in Cyprus. This has been supposed to be referred to by Justin, who wrote probably after the establishment of Christianity, but whose work consists of selections from Trogus Pompeius, a lost writer of the Augustan age. He reports that it was the Cypriote custom to send maidens before their marriage on certain days to seek their dowry by prostitution on the seashore, {267} and to pay the offerings to Venus for their future chastity. Dido on her way to Carthage touched at the island at the very time, and took on board her fleet eighty of these damsels, to be wives to her followers and assist in peopling the city she was going to found.[267.1] We shall further