Intimately connected with the worship of the male and female powers of generation is the sacred prostitution which was practised so generally by some of the ancient nations, and of which we have details in the classics. The information given by Herodotus respecting the women of Babylonia reads strange indeed to those who are acquainted only with modern codes of morals, and to whom the special and essential features of phallic faiths are unknown. This author describes it as a shameful custom, but he informs us of it as an indisputable fact, that every woman born in the country was compelled at least once in her life to go and sit in the precinct of Venus, and there consort with a stranger. Rich and poor alike had to conform to this rule--the ugly and the beautiful, the attractive and the repulsive. A peculiarity of the custom was that once having entered the sacred enclosure, the woman was not allowed to return home until she had paid the debt which the law prescribed as due from her to the state; the result of this was that those who were the happy possessors of personal charms seldom were detained very long, while the plain-featured and unattractive ones were sometimes several years before they could obtain their release. We are told that the wealthier women, too proud to associate with the lower class, though obliged to undergo the same ordeal, would drive to the appointed place in covered carriages with a considerable retinue of servants, there making as much display as possible of their rank and wealth in order to overawe the commoner class of men, and drive them to females of humbler rank; they sat in their carriages while crowds of poorer people sat within the holy enclosure with wreaths of string about their heads. The scene was at once strange and animated; numbers of both sexes were coming and going; and lines of cords marked out paths in all directions in which the women sat, and along which the strangers passed in order to make their choice. Patiently or impatiently, as the case may be, the female waited till some visitor, taking a fancy to her, fixed upon her as his chosen sacrifice by throwing a piece of silver into her lap and saying, "The goddess Mylitta prosper thee." (Mylitta being the Assyrian name for Venus). The coin need not be of any particular size or value, but it is obligatory upon her to receive it, because when once thrown it is sacred. Nor could the woman exercise any choice as to whom she could go with, the first who threw the coin had a legal title to her, and the law compelled her submission. But having once obeyed the law, she was free for the rest of her life, and nothing in the shape of a bribe, however extensive, would persuade her to grant further favours to any one.