The History of Prostitution

Prostitution coeval with Society.-Prostitutes in the Eighteenth Century B.C.-Tamar and Judah.-Legislation of Moses.-Syrian Women.-Rites of Moloch.-Groves.-Social Condition of Jewish Harlots.-Description by Solomon.-The Jews of Babylon.

Our earliest acquaintance with the human race discloses some sort of society established. It also reveals the existence of a marriage tie, varying in stringency and incidental effects according to climate, morals, religion, or accident, but every where essentially subversive of a system of promiscuous intercourse. No nation, it is believed, has ever been reported by a trustworthy traveler, on sufficient evidence, to have held its women generally in common. Still there appear to have been in every age men who did not avail themselves of the marriage covenant, or who could not be bound by its stipulations, and their appetites created a demand for illegitimate pleasures, which female weakness supplied. This may be assumed to be the real origin of prostitution throughout the world, though in particular localities this first cause has been assisted by female avarice or passion, religious superstition, or a mistaken sense of hospitality.

Accordingly, prostitution is coeval with society. It stains the earliest mythological records. It is constantly assumed as an existing fact in Biblical history. We can trace it from the earliest twilight in which history dawns to the clear daylight of to-day, without a pause or a moment of obscurity.

Our most ancient historical record is believed to be the Books of Moses. According to them, it must be admitted that prostitutes were common among the Jews in the eighteenth century before Christ. When Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Judah, desired to defeat the cruel Jewish custom, and to bear children, notwithstanding her widowhood, she "put her widow's garments off from her, and covered her with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place.... When Judah saw her he thought her a harlot, for she had covered her face."[7] The Genesiacal account thus shows that prostitutes, with covered faces, must have been common at the time. It is the more valuable, as it furnishes the particulars of the transaction. To keep up her disguise, Tamar demands a kid as her recompense. Judah agrees, and leaves his "signet, and his bracelets, and his staff" as a pledge for the kid. It appears to have been regarded as no dishonor to have commerce with a prostitute, for Judah sends his friend the Adullamite, a man of standing, to deliver the kid; but to defraud the unfortunate woman of her ill-gotten gain must have been considered shameful, for, when Judah learns that she has disappeared, he expresses alarm "lest we be shamed" for not having paid the stipulated price. It may also be noticed, as an illustration of the connection between prostitution and pure domestic morals, that when Judah learns that his daughter-in-law is pregnant, he instantly orders her to be burned for having "played the harlot."

Four centuries afterward it fell to the lot of Moses to legislate on the Jewish morals, no doubt sadly corrupted by their sojourn in Egypt. His command is formal and emphatic: "Do not prostitute thy daughter, lest the land fall to whoredom.... There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel."[8] He was equally decided in his condemnation of worse practices, to which it would appear the Jews were much addicted.[9] He laid penalties on uncleanness of every kind, and on fornication; but it would appear that he rather confirmed than abrogated the customary right of a Jewish father to sell his daughter as a concubine.[10] With the practical view of improving the physical condition of the race, Moses guarded, by elaborate laws, against improper and corrupt unions. Adultery and rape he punished with death. The bride was bound, under pain of death by stoning, to prove to the satisfaction not only of her husband, but of the tribe, that she had been chaste to the day of her marriage.[11] A long list of relatives were specified among whom it was illegal to intermarry. Furthermore, Moses endeavored, with marked zeal, to check the progress of disease among both sexes. Whether the maladies mentioned in Leviticus[12] were syphilitic in their nature, it were difficult to say. Modern medical science admits that, in hot climates, want of cleanliness and frequent amorous indulgence will generate phenomena similar to the "issue" so frequently mentioned by Moses. However this be, it is certain that both Jews and Jewesses were subject to diseases apparently similar to the common gonorrh?a; that these diseases were infectious; and that Moses, in reiterated injunctions, forbade all sexual intercourse, and almost all association, with persons thus afflicted. So earnest was his desire to eradicate the evil from the people, that he extended his prohibition to women during the period of their menstrual visitation.

Having done this much for the Jews, Moses appears to have connived at the intercourse of their young men with foreign prostitutes. He took an Ethiopian concubine himself. Syrian women, Moabites, Midianites, and other neighbors of the Jews-many of them, as it appears, young and lovely, but with debauched and vicious principles-established themselves as prostitutes in the land of Israel. For many years, until the time of Solomon, they were excluded from Jerusalem and the large cities. Driven to the highways for refuge, they lived in booths and tents, where they combined the trade of a peddler with the calling of a harlot. Unlike Tamar, they did not veil the face. Reclining within the tent, with no more clothing than the heat of the climate suggested, these dissolute girls invited the complaisance of passengers who stopped to refresh their thirst or replenish their wardrobe at their booth. So long as their practices violated no law of nature, the prudent legislator pursued a tolerant policy. Before long, however, abominable rites in honor of Moloch, Baal, or Belphegor, were formally established by the "strange women" and their male accomplices. Moloch, whose disgusting exactions we find in Ph?nicia, and at Carthage also, demanded male worship. The belly of the god's statue was a furnace, in which a fierce fire was kindled and fed with animal sacrifice; around it the priests and their proselytes danced to the sound of music, sang wild songs, and debased themselves by practices of a disgusting and unnatural character. Nor was the worship of Baal less revolting. He too had his statues, in forms eminently calculated to excite the animal passions, and surrounded by cool groves in which the most shameless prostitution was carried on by all who would deposit an offering on the altars of the idol. It would even seem, from several passages in the Bible,[13] that the participators in these infamies were not invariably human beings. Against such enormities the wrath of Moses and his successors was aroused, on hygienic as well as moral and religious grounds. Participation in the rites of Moloch was punished with death.[14] Aaron's grandson did not hesitate to commit a double homicide to mark the Divine abhorrence of the daughters of Midian; and Moses himself, warned by the frightful progress of disease among the male Jews, struck at its roots by exterminating every female Midianite among his captives, save the virgins only.

An express command forbade the establishment of groves near the Jewish temples, evidently on account of the convenience such shady retreats afforded to prostitutes. Yet on various occasions in the history of Israel we find accounts of the destruction of such groves, and of the statues of the gods in whose honor human nature was defiled.[15] Solomon, whose wisdom was singularly alloyed with sensuality, not only set the example of inordinate lust, keeping, it is said, seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, but repealed the wise restrictions of his predecessors in regard to prostitutes, allowing them to exercise their calling within the city of Jerusalem. They multiplied so fast that the prophets speak of them wandering on all the hills, and prostituting themselves under every tree, and at a later date they even invaded the Temple, and established their hideous rites in its courts. That noble edifice had become, in the time of Maccabees, a mere brothel plenum scortantium cum meretricibus.[16]

It is, however, apparent, notwithstanding the severe ordinances of the Jewish legislators, that prostitutes were a recognized class, laboring under no hopeless ban. Jephtha, the son of a prostitute, became none the less chief of Israel; and some commentators have contended that the retreat to which he condemned his daughter was simply the calling of her grandmother. Joshua's spies slept openly in the house of the harlot Rahab, whose service to Israel was faithfully requited by the amnesty granted to her family, and the honorable residence allotted to her in Jud?a. Samson chose the house of a harlot to be his residence at Gaza; his fatal acquaintance with another harlot, Delilah, is the leading trait of his story. Even Solomon did not disdain to hear the rival wranglings of a pair of harlots, and to adjudicate between them. Prostitution was in fact legally domiciled in Jud?a at a very early period, and never lost the foothold it had gained. Of the manner in which it was carried on, an idea may be formed from the very vivid picture in Proverbs:[17]

"For at the window of my house,

I looked through my casement,

And beheld among the simple ones,

I discerned among the youths,

A young man void of understanding,

Passing through the streets near her (the strange woman's) corner;

And he went the way to her house,

In the twilight, in the evening,

In the black and dark night;

And, behold, there met him a woman

With the attire of a harlot, and subtile of heart.

She is loud and stubborn;

Her feet abide not in her house:

Now she is without, now in the streets,

And lieth in wait at every corner.

So she caught him, and kissed him,

And with an impudent face said unto him,

I have peace-offerings with me;

This day have I paid my vows.

Therefore came I forth to meet thee,

Diligently to seek thy face,

And I have found thee.

I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry,

With carved works, with linen of Egypt.

I have perfumed my bed with myrrh,

Aloes, and cinnamon.

Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning:

Let us solace ourselves with loves. * * *

With her much fair speech she caused him to yield,

With the flattering of her lips she forced him.

He goeth after her straightway,

As an ox goeth to the slaughter,

Or as a fool to the correction of the stocks."

That prostitution continued to be practiced generally and openly until the destruction of the old Jewish nation, the language of the Biblical prophets does not permit us to doubt. It may be questioned whether it ever assumed more revoltingly public forms in any other country. The Babylonish conquest must have changed the parts, without altering the performance. At Babylon, the Jewish maidens, whose large, expressive eyes, voluptuous mouth, slender and graceful figure, with well-developed bust and limbs, were frequently the theme of ancient poets, peopled the houses of prostitution, and ministered to the lusts of the nobles. Nor even after the return to Jerusalem was the evil extirpated. It was to a prostitute that Christ uttered the memorable sentence, "Her sins are forgiven because she loved much."

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