“Throughout the Troglodyte country,” relates Strabo, “the people lead a nomad life. Each tribe has its chief, or tyrant. The women and the children are possessed in common, with the exception of the wives and children of the chief, and whoever is guilty of adultery with one of the wives of the chief is punished by a fine consisting of the payment of a sheep.”[66]
Another passage of Strabo’s, which is better known, is often quoted as proving a primitive epoch of promiscuity among the ancient Arabs also. This passage is curious and interesting, but it has not in the least the extent of signification that is attributed to it. Concerning the conjugal customs of the peoples of Arabia Felix, Strabo speaks as follows:—“Community of goods exists between all the members of the same family, but there is only one master, who is always the eldest of the family. They have only one wife between them all, and he who can forestall the others enters her apartment the first, and enjoys her, after having taken the precaution of placing his staff across the door (it is the custom for every man to carry a staff). She never spends the night with any but the eldest, the chief. This promiscuity makes them all brothers. We must add that they have commerce with their own mothers. On the other hand, adultery, which means for them commerce with a lover who is not of the family, is pitilessly punished with death. The daughter of one of the kings of the country, who was marvellously beautiful, had fifteen brothers, all desperately in love with her, and who, for this reason, took turns in enjoying her without intermission. Fatigued with their assiduity, she invented the following stratagem. She procured staffs exactly similar to those of her brothers, and when one of them left her, she quickly placed across the door the staff similar to that of the brother who had just quitted her, then replaced it shortly after by another, and so on, taking care not to place there the staff like the brother’s whose visit she was expecting. Now, one day, when all the brothers were together in the public place, one of them went to her door, and concluded, at the sight of the staff, that some one was with her; but, as he had left all his brothers together, he believed in a flagrant act of adultery, hastened to seek their father, and led him to the spot. He was, however, forced to acknowledge in his presence that he had slandered his sister.”[67]
Even admitting the perfect accuracy of the fact related by Strabo (and there is nothing in it to surprise an ethnographical sociologist), the word promiscuity is here quite inappropriate. The custom of maternal incest, which is not without example, perhaps warrants the supposition of ancient familial promiscuity; but in reality the Arabs of whom Strabo speaks were simply polyandrous, and they were so precisely in the manner of the Thibetans of the present day; they practised fraternal polyandry—a conjugal form to which we shall presently return.
The other examples of so-called promiscuity related by the writers of antiquity are, unfortunately, so briefly given that it is difficult to judge of their value.
“The Agathyrses” (Scythians), says Herodotus, “are the most delicate of men; their ornaments are chiefly of gold. They have their women in common in order that they may all be brothers, and that, being so nearly related, they may feel neither hatred nor envy against each other.”[68]
In another passage Herodotus says of the Massagetes (Scythians), “Each man marries a wife, but they use them all in common.” The assertion is grossly contradictory, and can only relate to the extremely loose manners of the unmarried women. As a matter of fact, amongst many savage or barbarous peoples chastity is not imposed on the women, as long as they have no proprietors. “When one of them desires a woman,” continues Herodotus, “he suspends his quiver in front of his chariot, and tranquilly unites with her.”[69]
This is merely a trait of very free manners, which may be placed by the side of many others, proving that modesty has been slow of growth in the human brain. The Tahitians were still more cynical than the Massagetes. Herodotus himself speaks of black Indians (Tamils) “who coupled as publicly as beasts” (iii. 101), and V. Jacquemont has related that Runjeet Singh would ride with one of his wives on the back of an elephant and take his pleasure publicly with his companion, careless of censure (V. Jacquemont, Corres., 16th March 1831). It would be very easy, by searching into ethnography, to accumulate facts of this kind; but for the moment I have only to continue my examination of old Greco-Roman texts relating more or less to promiscuity. I therefore return to them. Herodotus again relates, in speaking of the Anses, an Ethiopian tribe: “Their women are common; they do not live with them, but couple after the manner of beasts. When a vigorous child is born to a woman, all the men go to see it at the third month, and he whom it most resembles acknowledges it for his.”[70] And here we have Pliny saying also of the Garamantes: Garamantes matrimoniorum exsortes, passim cum feminis degunt.[71]
Strabo, too, affirms of the Celtic population of Ierne (Ireland), “the men have public commerce with all kinds of women, even with their mothers and sisters.”[72]
The passages that I have just quoted are those which are most frequently used to support the pretension that human societies have begun with promiscuity; they are at once the most ancient, most authentic, and most explicit. We may add to them the assertion of Varro, quoted by Saint Augustine,[73] according to which the Greeks, prior to the time of Cecrops, lived in promiscuity. But how is it possible not to be struck with the weakness of these historical proofs? Some of them are mere general assertions, while others plainly relate either to social anomalies or to cases of polyandry. There is no doubt as to this in regard to the ancient Arabs of whom Strabo speaks, and also to the Protohellenes of Varro. This last instance certainly relates to the matriarchal family, of which I shall have to speak again at some length. In fact, after having stated that the Protohellenes had no marriage, Varro adds that the children only knew their mother and bore her name. The proof is decisive, for the matriarchate does not in the least exclude marriage, as we shall see later, and in the case of the Lydians it lasted until the time of Herodotus.
In order to complete this review of ancient texts, I will mention further the passage of the Timæus in which Socrates speaks of the community of wives:—“On the subject of the procreation of children we established a community of wives and children; and we devised means that no one should ever know his own child. They were to imagine that they were of one family, and to regard those who were within a certain limit of age as brothers and sisters; and again, those who were of an elder generation as parents and grandparents, and those who were of a younger generation as children and grandchildren.”