Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/30

14 could promise their daughters, sisters, and wards to whom they pleased. The relatives of rich heiresses had a legal right to ask them in marriage, in order that the riches might remain in the family. If a man died childless, his nearest relatives were entitled to his property. Women, daughters and sisters, who were discovered in a dishonorable act, could be sold as slaves by their fathers and brothers. Irregularities on the part of men were, by the way, not considered as adultery. Solon says: "Take a single legitimate, free born daughter for your wife, in order to beget children." With this he exhausted his whole conception of marriage and conjugal morality. He might have said: "According to our laws and ideas, the begetting of legitimate children is limited to the marriage relation between the man and the free born woman; aside from this, however, the man can keep as many concubines as he likes. But the woman would have to pay for any outside love affair with her liberty or her life."

It was also customary for a time, among the Athenians, to lend their wives. Thus even Socrates is said to have lent his Xantippe to Alkibiades, for which, indeed, according to the reports that are current about this lady, he may not have had need of great self-denial.

These, with regard to women, truly barbaric Solonic laws originated for the most part in