[The Duke]

The temple complex includes a sanctuary where it is thought girls from good families worked briefly in "sacred prostitution" as a rite of passage to full womanhood.

Like Monica Lewinski?

[pierrem15]

No, those were the Clinonites...

[blam]

"Like Monica Lewinski?"

Yup. Apparently the fathers approved of this too.

[monkeyman81]

Sounds like the ancient Middle East- not too unusual in the neighborhood a little to the east of there. Had not heard of it in Italy though.
I remember that the Sumerians and Canaanites had temple prostitutes. So did the Greeks at their temple to Aphrodite in Corinth. That was not unusual in the fertility goddess cults like that of Astarte/Inanna.