It would be an endless task to enumerate all the nations which practised polygamy; we shall, therefore, only mention a few, where the practice seemed to vary something from the common method. The ancient Sabaeans are not only said to have had a plurality, but even a community of wives; a thing strongly inconsistent with that spirit of jealousy which prevails among men in most countries where polygamy is allowed. The ancient Germans were so strict monogamists,[3] that they reckoned it a species of polygamy for a woman to marry a second husband even after the death of the first. "A woman (say they) has but one life, and but one body, therefore should have but one husband;" and besides, they added, "that she who knows she is never to have a second husband, will the more value and endeavor to promote the happiness and preserve the life of the first." Among the Heruli this idea was carried farther, a woman was obliged to strangle herself at the death of her husband, lest she should, afterwards marry another; so detestable was polygamy in the North, while in the East it is one of these rights which they most of all others esteem, and maintain with such inflexible firmness, that it will probably be one of the last of those that it will wrest out of their hands. The Egyptians, it is probable, did not allow of polygamy, and as the Greeks borrowed their institutions from them, it was also forbid by the laws of Cecrops, though concubinage seems either to have been allowed or overlooked; for in the Odyssey of Homer we find Ulysses declaring himself to be the son of a concubine, which he would probably not have done, had any degree of infamy been annexed to it. In some cases, however, polygamy was allowed in Greece, from a mistaken notion that it would increase population. The Athenians, once thinking the number of their citizens diminished, decreed that it should be lawful for a man to have children by another woman as well as by his wife; besides this, particular instances occur of some who have transgressed the law of monogamy. Euripides is said to have had two wives, who, by their constant disagreement, gave him a dislike to the whole sex; a supposition which receives some weight from these lines of his in Andromache: ne'er will I commend More beds, more wives than one, nor children curs'd With double mothers, banes and plagues of life. Socrates too had two wives, but the poor culprit had as much reason to repent of his temerity as Euripides. [3] Monogamy is having only one wife. EUNUCHS.