Sexual self-surrender as a purely sensual act is associated with religious feeling. Thus in some cases a woman would experience a combination of ardent sensuality with intense religious feeling, would devote herself wholly to the service of the god, and in his name would permanently surrender her body; whilst in other cases the idea of a divine harem--in Indian belief every god has a harem--would find its earthly exemplar in temple prostitution, by means of which the deity would enjoy a number of women through the intermediation of men; or, finally, this custom would arise out of the primitive practice, according to which sexual intercourse, regarded as a religious act, =customarily= took place in a temple, or in some consecrated room of a house. In support of this view, we may quote a significant utterance from Herodotus (chapter lxiv. of the second book of his “History”), who in ethnological matters had such accurate discrimination. He reports that among the Egyptians intercourse was strictly forbidden in the temples, and then says: “For people of all nations, except the Egyptians and the Hellenes, are accustomed to copulate in holy places, and proceed after intercourse unwashed into the holy places; and they are of opinion that men resemble animals, and every one sees beasts and birds copulating in the temples of the gods, and in the consecrated groves. Now, =if this were displeasing to the gods, the animals would not do it=. Men, therefore, do this, and give this reason for it.” This custom arose, without doubt, from the need for a religious sentiment, and from the wish to enter into direct communion with the deity, by remaining in the temple during the sexual act. When later the divine beings obtained their own consecrated women in the form of the =temple-girls=, it was no longer necessary for a man to take his own wife or some other woman into the temple, for now communion with the deity could be obtained by means of intercourse with the temple-girls. In the case of =feminine= deities a fourth cause or influence comes into operation in the production of temple prostitution, inasmuch as the courtesans, on account of their extreme beauty and their remarkable intellectual powers, were often regarded as representatives of the goddess. This explains how it happened that among the Greeks beautiful hetairae served as models for Praxiteles and Apelles, when these sculptors were making statues for the temple. The sacred priests of Venus, the “kade-girls” of the Phœnicians, and the “hierodules” of the Greeks, were the servants of Aphrodite, and dwelt within the precincts of the temple. Their number was often very great. Thus in Corinth more than 1,000 female hierodules prostituted themselves in the precincts of the temple of Aphrodite Porne, and even within the temple.[49]