However Aryan India may be, she differs very remarkably from us. Let us look now at the way in which adultery has been regarded in Europe, and, to begin with, in the Greco-Roman world. We know that in classic antiquity marriage was quite crudely considered as a civic duty, and looked at from the single point of view of population. Lycurgus and Solon encouraged the impotent husband to favour the adultery of his young wife. Speaking of the laws of Lycurgus, Plutarch says--“He laughed at those who revenge with war and bloodshed the communication of a married woman’s favours; and allowed that, if any one in years should have a young wife, he might introduce to her some handsome and worthy young man, whom he most approved, and when she had borne a child of this generous race, bring it up as his own. Also he permitted that if a man of character should entertain a passion for a married woman upon account of her modesty and the beauty of her children, he might beg her husband that he might be allowed to plant, as it were, in rich and fertile soil, excellent children, the congenial offspring of excellent parents.”[704] This is marriage considered without the least prejudice, from the strict point of view of social utility. Solon imitates Lycurgus on this point, but with one restriction which recalls the Code of Manu, that the wife of an impotent husband should, with his permission of course, choose a lover from among the nearest relatives of the said husband.[705] Custom sometimes went further than the laws, and Plutarch relates that Cimon of Athens, who was a model of goodness and greatness of soul, lent his wife to the rich Callias.[706] But that did not prevent the laws of Solon from authorising the husband to kill the adulterer.[707] Further, the law punished with civil degradation the too indulgent husband, and authorised the family tribunals to condemn to death the guilty woman, whom the husband himself executed before witnesses.[708] Lastly, a law of Draco, which was never abrogated, delivered the adulterous lover to the discretion of the husband.[709] After all, save for the good of the state, before which everything had to bend, this Greek legislation only consecrates the old primitive right by which the wife was the property of her husband.