The practice of marriage between such near re- lations as father and daughter, mother and son, brother and sister, is often described as common in Asia Minor. This disregard of the common restric- tions on marriage is mentioned usually as char- acteristic of tribes or persons, called Magusez, immigrant from Persia, and diffused over Cappa- docia, Phrygia, and Galatia, who retained during the Christian period their mysterious ritual, wor- shipped fire, refrained from slaying animals (though they employed other people to kill the animals which they required for food).* But we must be struck with the fact that, except as regards the worship of fire, we know that all the characteristics attributed to the Maguszi are clearly marked in the Anatolian ritual. The mystic ritual of the Divine life consisted of a series of incestuous unions. The slaying of an animal for food was an impious act, and the impiety was punished in the ritual (§ III (9)), though the animal slain was eaten. Basil, who is one of our authorities about the Maguszei, describes marriage by capture as practised and not harshly judged by ordinary opinion in his own time.t| Now, marriage by violence is characteristic of the mystic drama.
(2) Hierodoulot. —In this connexion another social fact must be noted, viz. ceremonial prosti- tution of the female hierodouwlot or slaves of the sanctuary. This custom is known to have been widely practised at the great centres of Anatolian religion. Strabo mentions it at Komana and other Eastern centres. In the West it was characteristic of Lydia generally ;+ and the women who contri- buted to build the grave of Alyattes were only employing in a sacred purpose the money which belonged to the goddess. This duty was originally or theoretically incumbent on all unmarried women for a season ; but how far it was practically acted on by people in general we have no means of deter- mining. During the Greco-Roman period it seems (so far as the scanty evidence permits any judg- ment) to have been carried into effect by women of ordinary society only in exceptional cases, on account of some special vow or some Divine com- mand (given in dream or oracle). But, even in the most educated period and society, the custom though doubtless regarded as a mark of supersti- tion and devotion to an un-Hellenic cult, was re-
* Eusebius, Prep. Huang. vi. pp. 275, 279 (Viger): Basil Ces. Hpist. 258: see an article (by the present lace the Quarterly Review, vol. 186, No. 372, p. 425.
t Quarterly Review, No. 372, p. 426; Basil, Epist. 270.
t In Phrygia, compare, for example, a Roman inscription (erected by a native of Pisidian Antioch), interpreted and printed correctly in Histor. Com. on Epistle to the Galatians p. 201 (incorrect in Kaibel, Inscrip. Greec. Ital. etc., No. 933, and elsewhere), with Strabo, p. 577. ; i
cognized and practised in some cases as one of the duties of religion by women who apparently returned to their ordinary place in society after their term of service.* Apart from these devotees, the custom was practised in later times by large numbers of women, slaves of the Hieron, as a per- manent way of life.
It might fairly be disputed whether that custom belonged to the original Anatolian religion, or was part of the accretion which gathered round it in the course of its development. Evidence does not exist to warrant a decided opinion ; but the custom probably belongs to a more ‘advanced’ and artificial state of society than the primitive Anatolian, and is to be ranked as belonging only to its develop- ment.+ This forms part of the ground on which rests our opinion that no trace of elevation can be observed in the history of that religion, but that its development is simply a degradation. The custom is, undoubtedly, not in keeping with the simple type which we attribute to primitive Anatolia, and seems incongruous with the institutions described in the following section. If we are right in this opinion, then the custom would have to be regarded as one of the instances of Oriental influence (like the horror of the swine in § III (6)), due to immigra- tion from the East and long subjection to a succes- sion of Asiatic monarchies. It is certainly an old-established part of the religion, going back to the earliest days of Oriental influence; but we believe it is possible to go back on fairly reliable evidence to an older stage in the history, when the women hierodouloi were of a different character, viz. guardians of the goddess and of her wor- shippers.
(3) Women guards.—The myth of Herakles and the Lydian queen Omphale, in which the woman wears the hero’s arms, while he sits and spins under her command, takes us back to the primitive type of society which is described in a series of early Anatolian legends of the Amazons. Omphale and Herakles are obviously types of the Great Goddess and her companion or attendant god; and we re- member that the Lydian kings for five centuries boasted to be descendants (7.e. representatives in orderly succession) of the first priest-king Herakles. The tale of the hero Achilles dressed as a woman and spinning in the family of Lykomedes is another example of the way in which Greek fancy worked up that primitive custom: Achilles is a hero of the north coast of Asia Minor and of some points on the Greek coast.