Of the conditions that have prevailed under the monogamous custom and among the so-called superior races, Letourneau, in his _Evolution of the Family_, says: "The Hebrews seem to have been alone, among the Semites, in adopting monogamy, at least in general practice. Doubtless the subjection of the Jewish woman was not extreme as it is in Kabyle; it was, however, very great. Her consent to marriage, it is true, was necessary when she had reached majority, but she was all the same sold to her husband. We find hardly more than the portrait of a laborious servant, busy and grasping. We shall see that the wife, though she might gain much money, which seems to have been the ideal of the Hebrew, according to the Proverbs, was repudiable at will, with no other reason than the caprice of the master who had bought her. Finally, and this is much more severe, she was always obliged to be able to prove, _cloths in hand_, that she was a virgin at the moment of her marriage, and this under pain of being stoned." The same state of affairs or worse existed in India and in Persia, although in Persia there seems to have been an attempt to enjoin the same fidelity upon the husband as upon the wife, according to the Zend-Avesta; the only severe restriction to marriage being that neither should marry an infidel. In India, where there has been for centuries an alleged monogamy (except among the privileged classes, where concubinage held sway), the ethical condition of the women has been, and still is, deplorable. In ancient Greece and Rome the position of the woman was most inferior. She was generally purchased, or given for service. Her husband's word was law, and mothers were compelled to obey their male children as uncomplainingly as though they were slaves. The wife and mother was not permitted to attend festivities and neither was she allowed the selection of her friends, her husband deciding this choice for her. This, of course, applied to the respectable, or so-called virtuous woman, which constituted the average. Then, as now, two classes of women were to some extent exempt from this rigid custom. One class was formed by those women whose wealth conferred upon them a degree of power, because the possessors of great wealth have always been a law unto themselves. The other class was formed by the women who practiced prostitution, and who, by reason of their mode of life, met men on terms of at least temporary social equality.