Prostitution is of religious origin, preserved and encouraged for many centuries not as a shame, but as a virtue, hailed by the Gods themselves. It seems that the origin of prostitution must be sought mainly in religious customs and in religion itself, the great preserver of social tradition. The most characteristic example is that recorded by Herodotus, in the fifth century BC, in the temple of Miletus, of the Babylonian Aphrodite, where every woman, once in her life, had to come and be given to the first stranger, who would throw a coin into her belly, in order to worship the goddess. Many similar customs existed in other parts of western Asia, in northern Africa, in Cyprus, and on other islands of the eastern Mediterranean. The rise of Christianity as a political force produced little change in policy. The principal fathers of the church tolerated prostitution. We find brothels under municipal protection in the thirteenth century. They constituted a kind of public service, their managers being considered almost civil servants. Pope Clement II Issued a bill on prostitutes that they would be tolerated, provided they paid a certain amount of their income to the Church. Pope Sixtus IV was more practical. From a single brothel, which he had built himself, he was receiving an income of 20,000 ducats...
