peculiar fruit. The ram, the he-goat, and the dove, especially the white dove, animals of vigorous procreation and reproduction, were dedicated to her, and formed the most welcome offerings. In the temples of the goddess before the cell in which she was worshipped under the form of conical stones or upright pillars of wood, were dove-cotes and pools of water.[511] Fish also were dedicated to this goddess; and certain kinds of fish were sacred among the Syrians. These were not to be injured, and enjoyed divine honours.[512] Beside the rich and ancient temple of Derceto at Ascalon was a lake abounding in fish. At Hierapolis the image of Atargatis, which had a dove on the head, was carried down to the lake near the temple. This image of "the Assyrian Urania" was also carried down to the sea, amid a great crowd collected from Syria, Arabia, and Mesopotamia.[513] The image of Derceto at Ascalon, on the shore of the sea, in that temple which was the oldest of Urania, known to Herodotus, was a woman as far as the waist, but from the thighs downwards she had the body of a fish.[514] From the custom of carrying the image of the goddess to pools of water, and the form of the goddess at Ascalon, has arisen the legend of the Greeks, that at Ascalon or Hierapolis she threw herself into the water, and was changed into a fish. The colonies of the Phenicians worshipped a Venus Marina, and the goddess of Berytus is said to have come from the sea; with the Greeks the goddess of Cyprus and Cythera is said to have risen from the sea.[515] Appian remarks that the goddess of Hierapolis was regarded by some as Aphrodite, by others as Hera, and by others again as the source and spring of all that came out of moisture.[516] Hence the Bilit (Baaltis) of Byblus, the Derceto of Ascalon, the Atargatis of Hierapolis, the Ashera of the Hebrews, was a deity favourable to birth and fertility, the power of nature which creates from moisture and water.