The Boudoir No. 2

ANTIQUITY OF HARLOTS

The practice of female prostitution has prevailed among all nations from the earliest antiquity to the present day. In ancient times, the persons and professions of prostitutes were held in the highest respect, even by magistrates, princes, priests, and philosophers. They were looked upon as a useful and necessary body, devoted to the public service. A connexion with them was not held to be a crime, nor was it, from the advantage of primitive cleanliness, often attended with the modern ill consequences.

By going as far back as the times of Judah, we shall surely be thought to have dipped deep enough into antiquity; and by having recourse to those holy books, which are read every week for our instruction, we may depend upon the soundness of the doctrine.

The patriarch Judah (38th chapter of Genesis) then, who was to be the father of so many generations of the faithful, seeing a comely damsel by the way-side, and the spirit moving within his fleshly tabernacle, prayed that he might come in into her. She, who appeared to be a harlot, because she had covered her face, immediately, as a necessary preliminary in the course of business, demanded her fee; which by mutual agreement was to be a kid. We find not, in any part of the text, that this meretricious transaction is to be looked upon as sinful. We are, moreover, taught that the whores of those very early ages were, for sufficient reasons no doubt, just as eager to obtain "the money first" as they are at present, and that covering the face was a mark of the profession. Everyone must remember to have read with what honour and distinction the harlot Rahab was treated by that pious robber and cut-throat Joshua; though it is not particularly said that the judge, like his ancestor Judah, bargained also for a "stroke."

Nor were the ladies then a whit behind those of the present time in the knowing blandishments of their profession, as we may find by the many cautions against their seductive arts, dispersed up and down in different parts of the scripture.

Mary Magdalen, having spent her youth and beauty in this way of life, was afterwards reclaimed, and kept "good company." The Egyptian saint, young Mary, prostituted herself "to raise the wind" for a passage to Jerusalem, on a pilgrimage; and afterwards "spent chastely" forty years in the desert with Zosimus.

We are told by Herodotus, that even the daughters of kings were accustomed to trade upon their "own bottoms," for the pious purpose of building or endowing temples, without ever suffering any degradation of character in consequence.

The whores of ancient days were patronised and respected by heroes and great men, as well sacred as profane. If we are more reserved in these latter days, and they are not held in such high estimation as of old, we still cannot avoid an acknowledgment of their indispensable use; and have numerous and illustrious instances to adduce of strong predilections for them. The holy successors of St. Peter draw a considerable part of their revenue from a tax upon the order of prostitutes. The attachment of the famous Marshal Saxe, to the very lowest class of the daughters of Venus, is well known; one of whom continued passionately devoted to him to the last moments of his life.