113 Eusebius, _Vita Constantini_, iii. 58; Socrates, _Historia Ecclesiastica_, i. 18. 7-9; Sozomenus, Historia Ecclesiastica, v. 10. 7. Socrates says that at Heliopolis local custom obliged the women to be held in common, so that paternity was unknown, “for there was no distinction of parents and children, and the people prostituted their daughters to the strangers who visited them” (τοῖς παριοῦσι ξένοις). The prostitution of matrons as well as of maids is mentioned by Eusebius. As he was born and spent his life in Syria, and was a contemporary of the practices he describes, the bishop of Caesarea had the best opportunity of informing himself as to them, and we ought not, as Prof. M. P. Nilsson does (_Griechische Feste_, Leipsic, 1906, p. 366 n.2), to allow his positive testimony on this point to be outweighed by the silence of the later historian Sozomenus, who wrote long after the custom had been abolished. Eusebius had good reason to know the heathenish customs which were kept up in his diocese; for he was sharply taken to task by Constantine for allowing sacrifices to be offered on altars under the sacred oak or terebinth at Mamre; and in obedience to the imperial commands he caused the altars to be destroyed and an oratory to be built instead under the tree. So in Ireland the ancient heathen sanctuaries under the sacred oaks were converted by Christian missionaries into churches and monasteries. See Socrates, _Historia Ecclesiastica_, i. 18; _The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings_, ii. 242 _sq._ 114 Athanasius, _Oratio contra Gentes_, 26 (Migne’s _Patrologia Graeca_, xxv. 52), γυναῖκες γοῦν ἐν εἰδωλείοις τῆς Φοινικῆς πάλαι προεκαθέζοντο, ἀπαρχόμεναι τοῖς ἐκεῖ θέοις ἑαυτῶν τὴν τοῦ σώματος αὐτῶν μισθαρνίαν, νομίζουσαι τῇ πορνειᾳ τὴν θέον ἑαυτῶν ἰλάσκεσθαι καὶ εἰς εὐμενείαν ἄγειν αὐτὴν διὰ τούτων. The account of the Phoenician custom which is given by H. Ploss (_Das Weib_,2 i. 302) and repeated after him by Fr. Schwally (_Semitische Kriegsaltertümer_, Leipsic, 1901, pp. 76 _sq._) may rest only on a misapprehension of this passage of Athanasius. But if it is correct, we may conjecture that the slaves who deflowered the virgins were the sacred slaves of the temples, the _ḳedeshim_, and that they discharged this office as the living representatives of the god. As to these _ḳedeshim_, or “sacred men,” see above, pp. 17 _sq._, and below, pp. 72 _sqq._ _ 115 The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs_, translated and edited by R. H. Charles (London, 1908), chapter xii. p. 81. 116 Lucian, _De dea Syria_, 6. The writer is careful to indicate that none but strangers were allowed to enjoy the women (ἡ δὲ ἀγορὴ μούνοισι ξείνοισι παρακέεται). _ 117 The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings_, i. 30 _sq._