5th century BCE

The 5th century BCE is invoked as a historical reference point in a discussion of prostitution in classical antiquity. Through a report attributed to Herodotus, the period anchors an example of a religious custom in Babylon, which the book distinguishes from the commercial systems that developed in other settings.

Historical Reference

The date belongs to the book’s broader account of women’s positions within ancient social and religious institutions. It is not treated as an isolated chronology: the passage uses the Babylonian example to trace how practices associated with fertility and religious service could be connected to economic arrangements and women’s social circumstances.

The Babylonian Temple Custom

According to the account attributed to Herodotus, in the 5th century BCE every woman in Babylon was required once in her life to go to the temple of Mylitta and give herself to a stranger in exchange for a coin, which she contributed to the temple treasury. Afterward, she returned home and lived chastely. The passage presents this as a specific religious obligation, not as an account of an ongoing occupation.

Religious and Commercial Forms

The Babylonian example is set beside hospitality prostitution and sacred prostitution, practices the book says were known among earlier peoples and persisted in classical antiquity. Sacred prostitution is described as serving a communal religious purpose through fertility rites. The discussion then distinguishes these practices from cases in which temple authorities turned prostitution into a profitable trade, and from Solon’s later institutionalization of commercial prostitution in Athens. The 5th-century reference therefore helps mark a contrast between a prescribed temple custom and the more explicitly organized systems of profit and regulation described elsewhere in the passage.

Significance in the Account

The date gives the historical example a defined place within a comparative argument about the different arrangements through which women’s sexuality was governed. The passage moves from the Babylonian custom, in which a woman returned to domestic chastity after the required act, to systems in which women were managed as sources of revenue. Its emphasis is on the social and institutional frameworks surrounding these practices, rather than on the date as an independent event.