Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/343

Rh and dance in public stark naked with the lads, and even wrestle in the open market-place,—the which however was done in all honesty and good faith, so History saith. But what sort of honesty and purity was this, we may well ask, to look on at these pretty maids so performing publicly? Honesty was it never a whit, but pleasure in the sight of them, and especially of their bodily movements and dancing postures, and above all in their wrestling; and chiefest of all when they came to fall one atop of the other, as they say in Latin, illa sub, ille super; ille sub et illa super,—"she underneath, he atop; he underneath, she atop." You will never persuade me, 'twas all honesty and purity herein with these Spartan maidens. I ween there is never chastity so chaste that would not have been shaken thereby, or that, so making in public and by day these feint assaults, they did not presently in privity and by night and on assignation proceed to greater combats and night-attacks. And no doubt all this might well be done, seeing how the said Lycurgus did suffer such men as were handsome and well grown to borrow other citizens' wives to sow seed therein as in a good and fruitful soil. So was it in no wise blameworthy for an old outwearied husband to lend his young and beautiful wife to some gallant youth he did choose therefor. Nay! the lawgiver did pronounce it permissible for the wife herself to choose for to help her procreation the next kinsman of her husband, then an if he pleased her fancy, to couple with him, to the end the children they might engender should at least be of the blood and race of the husband. Indeed there is some sense in the practice, and had not the Jews likewise the same law of license betwixt sister-in-law and brother-in-law? On the other hand our