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252 themselves recognised Asiatic influence. Pausanias speaks of the temple of heavenly Aphrodite in Cythera as the holiest and most ancient of all her shrines among the Hellenes. Herodotus, again, calls the fane of the goddess in Askalon of the Philistines "the oldest of all, and the place whence her worship travelled to Cyprus," as the Cyprians say, and the Phœnicians planted it in Cythera, being themselves emigrants from Syria. The Semitic element in this Greek goddess and her cult first demand attention.

Among the Semitic races, with whose goddess of love Aphrodite was thus connected, the deity had many names. She was regarded as at once the patroness of the moon, and of fertility in plants, beasts, and women. Among the Phœnicians her title is Astarte; among the Assyrians she was Istar; among the Syrians Aschera; in Babylon, Mylitta. Common practices in the ritual of the Eastern and Western goddesses were the license of the temple-girls, the sacrifices of animals supposed to be peculiarly amorous (sparrows, doves, he-goats), and, above all, the festivals and fasts for Adonis. There can scarcely be a doubt that Adonis—the young hunter beloved by Aphrodite, slain by the boar, and mourned by his mistress—is a symbol of the young season, the renouveau, and of the spring vegetation, ruined by the extreme heats, and passing the rest of the year in the under-world. Adonis was already known to Hesiod, who called him, with obvious meaning, the son of Phœnix and Alphesibœa, while Pausanias