Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Культовая проституция" in Russian language version.
There was a legal and clear distinction between the common prostitute and the hierodule, who was protected from slander by the same law which guarded the good name of married women.
There are various names for, and different classes of, hierodules, as we learn from the Code of Hammurabi.
In the early fifth century, Augustine’s City of God makes brief reference to the Phoenician custom of devoting their daughters to prostitution before the time of their marriage. Finally come reports from two Church historians, both near contemporaries of Augustine. The first of these, Socrates, cites again Heliopolis in Phoenicia as a site whose laws «ordered the women among them to be common, and therefore the children born there were of doubtful descent, so that there was no distinction of fathers and their offsping. Their virgins also were presented for prostitution to the strangers who resorted thither».
In the early fifth century, Augustine’s City of God makes brief reference to the Phoenician custom of devoting their daughters to prostitution before the time of their marriage. Finally come reports from two Church historians, both near contemporaries of Augustine. The first of these, Socrates, cites again Heliopolis in Phoenicia as a site whose laws «ordered the women among them to be common, and therefore the children born there were of doubtful descent, so that there was no distinction of fathers and their offsping. Their virgins also were presented for prostitution to the strangers who resorted thither».
