{"collection":"Classics","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/cla/sob/sob101.htm","path":"cla/sob/sob101.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/cla/sob/sob101.htm","text":"Astarte's priestesses engage in love at the rising of the moon; then they arise and bathe themselves in a great basin with a silver rim.\nWith crook'd fingers they comb their tangled locks, and their purple-tinted hands twined in their jet-black curls are like so many coral-branches in a dark and running sea.\nThey never pluck their deltas, for the goddess's triangle marks their bellies as a temple; but they tint themselves with paint-brush, and heavily scent themselves.\nAstarte's priestesses engage in love at the setting of the moon, then in a tent where bums a high gold lamp they stretch themselves at random.","title":"The Songs of Bilitis: III. Epigrams in the Isle of Cyprus: The Priestesses of Astarte","type":"page"}