her's name. The wife is expected to
put up with everything, while herself remaining chaste and faithful.
Although the Greek woman of heroic times is more highly respected than
she of the civilized period, still she is for her husband only the
mother of his legal heirs, his first housekeeper and the superintendent
of the female slaves, whom he can and does make his concubines at will.

It is this practice of slavery by the side of monogamy, the existence of
young and beautiful female slaves belonging without any restriction to
their master, which from the very beginning gives to monogamy the
specific character of being monogamy for women only, but not for men.
And this character remains to this day.

For the Greeks of later times we must make a distinction between Dorians
and Ionians. The former, with Sparta as their classic example, have in
many respects still more antiquated marriage customs than even Homer
illustrates. In Sparta existed a form of the pairing family modified by
the contemporaneous ideas of the state and still recalling group
marriage in many ways. Sterile marriages were dissolved. King
Anaxandridas (about 650 before Christ) took another wife besides his
childless one and kept two households. About the same time King Ariston
added another wife to two childless ones, one of which he dismissed.
Furthermore, several brothers could have one wife in common; a friend
who liked his friend's wife better than his own could share her with
him, and it was not considered indecent to place a wife at the disposal
of a sturdy "stallion," as Bismarck would have said, even though he
might not be a citizen. A certain passage in Plutarch, where a Spartan
matron refers a lover, who persists in making offers to her, to her
husband, seems to indicate--according to Schoemann--even a still greater
sexual freedom. Also adultery, faithlessness of a wife behind her
husband's back, was unheard of. On the other hand, domestic slavery in
Sparta, at least during the best time, was unknown, and the serf Helots
lived on separate country seats. Hence there was less temptation for a
Spartan to hold intercourse with other women. As was to be expected
under such circumstances, the women of Sparta occupied a more highly
respected place than those of other Greeks. Spartan women and the
Athenian hetaerae were the only Greek women of whom the ancients speak
respectfully and whose remarks they considered worthy of notice.

Quite a different c