The most beautiful of these girls came from the kingdoms of Asia. Every year vessels bearing to Alexandria gifts from tributaries or allies landed besides their cargoes a hundred virgins chosen by the priests for the service of the sacred garden. They came from Mysia, Crete, Phrygia, Babylon, and the banks of the Ganges, and there were also Jewesses among them. Some were fair of skin with impassive faces and inflexible breasts; others were dark as the earth after rain, and had gold rings through their noses, and dark hair hanging down upon their shoulders. Some came from still more distant lands; they were slender, quiet little creatures, whose language no one understood and who looked like yellow monkeys. Their eyes were long, and their straight black hair was grotesquely arranged. These girls spent the whole of their lives like lost and frightened animals. They knew the gestures of love but declined to kiss upon the mouth. They amused themselves by playing childish games. In a meadow apart, the fair and rosy daughters of the North lived together sleeping upon the grass. These were women from Sarmatia with triple-plaited hair, robust limbs, and square shoulders, who made themselves garlands of the branches of trees and wrestled among themselves for amusement; there were flat-nosed hairy Scythians and gigantic Teutons who terrified the Egyptians with their hair which was lighter than an old man’s and their flesh which was softer than a child’s; there were Gauls like animals, who laughed without reason, and young Celts with sea-green eyes, who never went out naked. The women of Iberia, too, who had swarthy breasts, spent their days together. They had heavy masses of hair which was skilfully arranged and did not remove the hairs from their bodies. Their firm skins and strong limbs were much in favour with the Alexandrians. They were as often employed as dancers as taken for mistresses. In the shade of the palm-trees dwelt the daughters of Africa, the Numidians veiled in white, the Carthaginians clad in black gauze, and Negresses clad in many-coloured costumes. There were fourteen hundred women. When a woman once entered the sacred garden, she never left it till the first day of her old age came upon her. She gave to the temple half of her gains and the rest sufficed for her food and perfumes.