Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/90

 70 HISTORY OF ART IN PIKKXICIA AND ITS DEI their work, while in presiding over love and generation she in- sured the perpetual renovation of life on earth. 1 To take part under her auspices in the work of nourishing that flame of sexual desire upon which the duration of the species depended, was to perform a meritorious act, and one of worship to the goddess ; hence the sacred prostitutions and the habit of attaching to the temples of Astarte those bands of hieroduli, who, under other names, continued the traditions of the Phoenician sanctuaries in Greece. Cyprus, Cythera, Kryx in Sicily, borrowed the worship of the Syro- Phoenician nature-goddess from the Sidonians." First Grcecicisecl under the name of Aphrodite, she also appears in the classic writers as Cypris, Cytheraea, and Erycina, titles which are so many certificates of origin;'' The dove, the most prolific of birds, was the favourite sacrifice to Astarte, and afterwards to Aphrodite. In Phoenicia, in Cyprus, in Sardinia, small tcrra-cotta figures have been found which represent either the goddess herself, or one of her priestesses. They are shown pressing a dove to their bosoms with one hand (Fig. 20). As a natural effect of a system that ordered the celestial on the same lines as the terrestrial world, these divine couples were 1 This double character of the great Oriental goddess is well expressed by Plautus, in a few lines put by him into the mouth of an Athenian : " Diva Astarte, hominum deorumque vis, vita, salus : rursus eadem qune cst Pernicies, mors, interitus. Mare, tellus ccelum, sidera Jovis qurectmque templa colimus, ejus ducuntur nutu, illi obtemperant Earn spectant " Mtrcator, iv., sc. vi., v. 825. The origin of the passage must be sought for in Philemon. Towards the end ot the fourth century these Oriental religions were well understood in Athens; the Phoenicians had temples of Melkart and Astarte at the Piraeus. - In the first century B.C. the temple of Venus Erycina still possessed such tracts of land and troops of slaves of both sexes who, after having served the goddess, became her freedmen and freedwomen and lived under her protection. They formed a class with special rights, which were respected by the Roman governors ; they were called in Latin renerii (CicKRo, /;/ Q. Ccccilium dirinatio, 55, 56 ; Pn> Clucntio 43). A Phoenician inscription found at Eryx, related, in all probability, to an offering or donation made to this goddess ; but the stone has been lost, and it is impossible to re-establish the text from the bad copy by which alone it is now represented (Corpus Inscriptionum Scmiticarum, part i. No. 135).
 * i The ancients were fully alive to this identity of Astarte and Aphrodite ; it will

here suffice to quote the testimony of Pmr.o of Byblos : TT/I> An-rdprrjv SWvocc? rryv .(f>po?>i-rr)v eivat Ae'yowi (Fragm. Hist. Grcrc., ed. C. Mri.LKR, vol. iii. p. 569). See also MOVERS, Die Phcenizicr,. p. 606, where many analogous passages are cited.