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H. is obviously writing as an eyewitness, and his account is of great value anthropologically; but he is mistaken in making universal one single set of rites, those of the goddess Nana at Erech. He may also be confusing the ἱερόδουλοι attached to the temple (v. i. ἱρὸν τὸ ἀργύριον) with the ordinary worshippers. For the custom cf. Strabo (745), who inaccurately condenses H. and adds κατά τι λόγιον, and Baruch vi. 43. Lucian describes the same custom from personal inquiry, but as an exception, in speaking of the Adonis worship (De Dea Syria, p. 454, c. 6); women there could escape the rite by cutting off their hair. For other instances cf. 94 n.; W. Robertson Smith, Kinship2 &c. p. 297; Westermarck, p. 72 (who thinks the custom not a survival of communal marriage but connected with phallic worship as a late development); and especially E. S. Hartland (Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, 1907, pp. 187-202), who considers the custom a ‘puberty rite’, belonging to a primitive stage of ideas, and only connected later with the worship of Mylitta; he quotes many parallels among modern savages. Women as a rule in Babylon had a position which, for a Semitic people, was high; the system of dowry, paid to the parents and secured to the wife (cf. 196. 4), gradually emancipated her; she could hold property and make contracts.
θώμιγγος. The ‘cord’ is a symbol of their service due to the goddess.
For Mylitta cf. 131. 3 n.
ἀποσιωσαμένη, ‘having discharged her sacred duty to the goddess’ (cf. iv. 154. 4).
For Aphrodite in Cyprus cf. 105. 2 and Hor. Odes i. 3. 1. Justin (xviii. 5) speaks of this custom there, when telling the story of Dido.
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