MARITAL JEALOUSY 135 



Customs of a similar character obtained, if we may 

 believe classical writers, in other barbarous nations. 

 It must be remembered that they are not recorded 

 with anthropological exactitude ; they are told of 

 nations often imperfectly known to the writer ; in 

 many cases the statements are founded on reports 

 by travellers and others incompetent, for various 

 reasons, to give an accurate account. Yet with full 

 allowance for all these objections, there emerges a 

 body of evidence proving that in ancient times the 

 cultured nations of the Mediterranean basin were 

 surrounded by peoples, many of which displayed the 

 same bestial or philosophic indifference to the actu?l 

 paternity of their offspring as is found among back- 

 ward peoples in almost all parts of the world. Nor 

 was this indifference confined to savage and semi- 

 savage tribes. The ancestors of some of the Greeks 

 were related to have shared it, and we may suspect 

 that all did so. The customs of Athenians as well as 

 Spartans, even in historic times, were witness to it. 

 This is not all. Among the many relics of lower 

 stages of culture found in the luxurious cities of 

 Western Asia their sexual customs were conspicuous. 



believe at one time prevailed at Athens) rather than trustworthy 

 testimony of polyandry. My argument does not require me to insist 

 that motherright is always accompanied by promiscuity or even 

 what we should call laxity of morals. We know that it is not. 

 But the law attributed to Solon and discussed in an earlier chapter 

 probably was a survival and a limitation of a more extended freedom 

 allowed to women. If this be so, light is shed on the tradition 

 recorded by Clearchus ; and we may therefore be justified in 

 suspecting the primitive Athenians of a social condition in which 

 women changed their mates at will, and perhaps retained none of 

 them long : a condition inconsistent, it is needless to say, with any 

 effective masculine jealousy. 



