Note 245-5 — Chapter II

In most mythical histories, the institutions of property and of marriage are ascribed to the same name (Menes Cecrops, the Athenian Thesmophories.) Among the Indian tribes of Terra Firma, the exchange of wives and the jus primæ noctis of the chiefs are very common. (Depons Voyage, I, 304, ff.) In North America, the Indians are very eager to rent out their wives for a glass of brandy. (Prinz Neuwied, N. A. Reise, I, 572 seq.) Compare Lewis and Clarke, Travels to the Source of the Missouri and the Pacific Ocean, 1804-1806. Almost always on entering a higher age-class it is one of[TN 79] the principal conditions to leave one's wife for a time to the more distinguished. On feast days, prayer days, etc., the women give themselves publicly up to vice; and this can be commuted only by a gift. (Prinz Neuwied, I, 129 ff., 272.) Community of women in California. (Bagert, Nachrichten von der Halbinsel C. 1772.) In many of the South Sea Islands, the youth of the higher classes were wont to form themselves into so-called arreyo-societies, the object of which was the most unlimited intercourse of the sexes (a pair being united generally only from 2 to 3 days), and the murder of the new born children. The girls principally were murdered, and hence the missionaries at Otaheite (New Cytheria) found only 1/5 as many women as men. Chaque femme semble être la femme de tous les hommes chaque homme le mari de toutes les femmes. (Marchand, I, 122.) The many governing queens here are characteristic. Compare Forster, Reise II, 100, 128; Kotzebue, Reise, III, 119; European Magazine, June, 1806; Reybaud, Voyages, et marines, 128, and the quotations in Klemm, Kulturgesch., IV, 307.

Similar customs are found among the nomads. The Bedouins dissolve their marriages so easily that a man forty-five years old had 50 wives; family secrets are a thing unknown there. (Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins, 64; Travels app. II, 448; Ritter, Erdkunde, XII, 205, 211, 983.) On the Libyans, see Herodot., IV, 168, 172, 186, 180: on the Massagetes, Herodot., I, 216; on the Taprobanes, Diod., II, 58; on the Troglodytes, Pomp, Mella., I, 8, Agatharch, 30. Community of women among the ancient Britons, Caesar, B. G. V, 14 seq.; also among the naked, tatooed Caledonians, Dio Cass., LXXVI, 12; probably also among the cannibal Irish. Strabo, IV, 201. Great laxity of the marriage tie in Moelmud's laws of Wales, (Palgrave, Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, I, 458 ff.) in which country a species of tenure in common of land and servants was customary. (Wachsmuth, Europ. Sittengesch. II, 225.) In Russia, in very ancient times, only the Polanes had real marriages. (Nestor v. Schlözer, I, 125 seq.) Something very analogous even among the Spartans: same education for boys and girls, admittance for men to the female gymnasiums; marriage in the form of an abduction, and afterwards fornication. (Xenoph., De rep. Laced. I, 6: Plutarch, Lycurg. 15.) Adultery tolerated by law in countless cases. (Xenoph., II, 7 ff.; St. John, The Hellenes, I, 394.) History of the origin of the so-called Partheniæ; Strabo, VI, 279. (Supra, § 83.) The custom which prevails among so many barbarous nations to designate one's progeny by the name of the mother, Sanchoniathan traces to the licentiousness of women. (p. 16, Orell.) Traces of this also in Egypt: Schmidt, Papyrusurkunden, 321 ff. Avunculus means little grand-father. Many proofs which Peschel, Völkerkunde, 243 seq. explains otherwise, but which seem to me to point to an original community of wives.