CHAPTER XII.
HEBREW AND ARYAN MONOGAMY.
I. Monogamy of the Races called Superior.—The monogamic ideal and the monogamic reality.
II. Hebrew Marriage.—Monogamy and concubinage—Position of the wife—The virtuous woman of the Book of Proverbs—Obligatory virginity—The levirate.
III. Marriage in Persia and Ancient India.—Marriage in the Avesta—Marriage in India—General monogamy—Extreme subjection of the wife—Purchase of the wife—Matrimonial prohibitions—The ideal spouse—Marriage in modern India.
IV. Marriage in Ancient Greece.—Wives and concubines—Low position of the wife—Marriage in Sparta—Celibacy chastised—The young Greek girl assimilated to a thing—Dowry—The wife emancipated by money.
V. Marriage in Ancient Rome.—Marriages of children—Relative liberty of the Roman woman—The Patria potestas—The Manus—Three kinds of marriage—The rights of the husband—The case of Cato the Elder—The jus connubii—The dowry and its effects.
VI. Barbarous Marriage and Christian Marriage.—Marriage among the Germans in the Middle Ages, among the Saxons of England—Marriage according to Christianity.
I. Monogamy of the Races called Superior.
After a long journey of exploration through the inferior forms of the sexual union amongst mankind, we have in the preceding chapter begun the study of monogamy, which all the superior races have more or less adopted in their legislation.
It is impossible to deny that monogamy is theoretically nobler than the other matrimonial forms. Nothing can be more beautiful than the union of two intelligent and refined beings freely associating their lives after ripe reflection “for better, for worse,” as the marriage service of England has it. But the reality is often very different from this poetic ideal. Even amongst the most highly civilised peoples, this spontaneous, disinterested, devoted union, based on moral and intellectual sympathies, is very rare; it does not exist in civilisations still partly barbarous, whose monogamy easily accommodates itself to the subjection of women, however extreme. We shall see that it is so, in studying this matrimonial type amongst the Hebrews at first, and afterwards amongst the Aryan races, that is to say, amongst the human types which are reputed par excellence Superior.