(B.C. 760), “except the Lord of Hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom (i. 9); and strong measures were required from good King Josiah (B.C. 641) who amongst other things, “brake down the houses of the sodomites that were by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove” (2 Kings xxiii. 7).  The bordels of boys (pueris alienis adhaeseverunt) appear to have been near the Temple.

Syria has not forgotten her old “praxis.”  At Damascus I found some noteworthy cases amongst the religious of the great Amawi Mosque.  As for the Druses we have Burckhardt’s authority (Travels in Syria, etc., p. 202), “unnatural propensities are very common amongst them.”

The Sotadic Zone covers the whole of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia now occupied by the “unspeakable Turk,” a race of born pederasts; and in the former region we first notice a peculiarity of the feminine figure, the mammae inclinatae, jacentes et pannosae, which prevails over all this part of the belt.  Whilst the women to the North and South have, with local exceptions, the mammae stantes of the European virgin,[FN#398] those of Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan and Kashmir lose all the fine curves of the bosom, sometimes even before the first child; and after it the hemispheres take the form of bags.  This cannot result from climate only; the women of Maratha-land, inhabiting a damper and hotter region than Kashmir, are noted for fine firm breasts even after parturition.  Le Vice of course prevails more in the cities and towns of Asiatic Turkey than in the villages; yet even these are infected; while the nomad Turcomans contrast badly in this point with the Gypsies, those Badawin of India.  The Kurd population is of Iranian origin, which means that the evil is deeply rooted:  I have noted in The Nights that the great and glorious Saladin was a habitual pederast.  The Armenians, as their national character is, will prostitute themselves for gain but prefer women to boys:  Georgia supplied Turkey with catamites whilst Circassia sent concubines.  In Mesopotamia the barbarous invader has almost obliterated the ancient civilisation which is ante-dated only by the Nilotic:  the mysteries of old Babylon nowhere survive save in certain obscure tribes like the Mandaeans, the Devil-worshippers and the Ali-ilahi.  Entering Persia we find the reverse of Armenia; and, despite Herodotus, I believe that Iran borrowed her pathologic love from the peoples of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and not from the then insignificant Greeks.  But whatever may be its origin, the corruption is now bred in the bone.  It begins in boyhood and many Persians account for it by paternal severity.  Youths arrived at puberty find none of the facilities with which Europe supplies fornication.  Onanism[FN#399] is to a certain extent discouraged by circumcision, and meddling with the father’s slave-girls and concubines would be risking cruel punishment if not death.  Hence they use each other by turns, a