For this cause did Lycurgus ordain in his Laws that virgins should be wedded without money dowry, to the end men might marry them for their merits, and not from greed. But, what kind of virtue was it? Why! on their solemn feast-days the Spartan maids were used to sing 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 Christian law hath reformed all this, albeit our Holy Father hath in divers cases granted dispensations founded on divers reasons. In Spain ’tis a practice much adopted, but never without dispensation. Well! to say something more, and as soberly as we may, of some other sorts of widows,—and then an end.