(The sea washes away all evils of mankind) was the refrain, one that resounds to this day in our ears from the East; so that we cannot wonder that baths and bathing formed a capital factor both in the public and private life of the Ancients. Whatever view might be taken of sexual intercourse, all agreed in this, that a certain defilement was connected with it, which (as follows indeed from our exposition on earlier pages) might easily become injurious to the organs brought into activity, and could only be obviated by dint of _baths_ and a system of _bathing_.[242] Thus we read in _Herodotus_:[243] “But as often as a _Babylonian_ has had intercourse with his wife, he sits down beside a lighted censer, and his wife does the same on the opposite side; then when morning has come, both _bathe_ themselves, for they will touch no vessel until they have washed. The same practice is followed by the _Arabians_ too.” Whether bathing after _each_ act of coition was a national custom of the _Egyptians_, we have been unable to discover, but _Clement of Alexandria_[244] states that they were forbidden, as was almost everywhere the case in Antiquity, to enter the temple without having washed or bathed themselves after sexual intercourse; while the Priests were bound to bathe after every nocturnal pollution.[245] This was equally an ordinance of the _Jews_, who at the same time were rendered by such pollution unclean till the evening. The last named People were also obliged to wash after every act of coition; at any rate _Josephus_[246] and _Philo_[247] declare it to have been so, for in the Old Testament it is nowhere enjoined. As is generally known, this custom has been kept up in the East down to the present day, even among the Christian populations,—affording a concurrent testimony to the necessity for its observance in these countries. Whether the _Greeks_ deliberately and with intention made use of baths and bathing immediately after sexual intercourse, it is difficult to ascertain quite for certain; but it seems probable, as not only does Mythology more than once[248] make express mention of the bath after coition, but the phrase ὅσιος ἀπ’ εὐνᾶς ὤν (being holy, purified, after the couch) points to the same conclusion. Moreover there is a passage in _Lucian_,[249]—though it is quite true he often describes Roman customs,—that might be thought to prove the same.