Philo: The Special Laws, III

C. D. Yonge (1854–1855) · Translated text

Section IX

IX. (51) Again, according to the injunctions of the sacred scriptures the constitution of the law does not recognise a harlot; as being a person alienated from good order, and modesty, and chastity, and all other virtues, who has filled the souls both of men and women with intemperance, polluting the immortal beauty of the mind, and honouring above it the short-lived perishable beauty of the body prostituting herself to every chance comer, and selling her beauty as if it were some vendible thing in the market, doing and saying every thing with a view to catch the young men.

And she excites her lovers to contests with one another, proposing herself as the most disgraceful prize for those who gain the victory. Let her, therefore, be stoned as an injury and mischief to, and a common pollution of, the whole state, having corrupted the graces of nature, which she ought to have adorned further by her own excellence.

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