Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/59

 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."

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." And here we have Pliny saying also of the Garamantes: ''Garamantes matrimoniorum exsortes, passim cum feminis degunt''.

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."

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, according to which the Greeks, prior to the time of Cecrops, lived in promiscuity. But how is it possible