three men, which must frequently have been the case, the means adopted for relieving the excessive number were either to marry them with heiresses, or to send them out as colonists; or the state had recourse to some other means of preventing absolute want. This would have been effected with the greater ease, if it were true, as Plutarch relates, that immediately after the birth of every Spartan boy, the eldest of the tribe, sitting together in a lesche, gave him one of the 9000 lots.(897) For this, however, it must be assumed that the state or the tribes had possession of some lots, of those perhaps in which the families had become extinct; but we know that these lots went in a regular succession to other families,(898) by which means many became exceedingly rich. These elders of the tribe, mentioned by Plutarch, were therefore probably only the eldest of the _house_ or γένος, who might take care that, if several sons and at the same time several lots had fallen together in one family, the younger sons should, as far as was possible, be in the possession of land, without however violating the indivisible unity of an allotment. In this manner at Sparta the family, together with the estate, formed an undivided whole, under the control of one head, who was privileged by his birth. But if the number of persons to be fed was too great, as compared with the means of feeding them, the natural consequence was, that the privileged eldest brother could afford to marry, while the younger brothers remained without wives or children. This natural inference from the above account is strikingly confirmed by a most singular statement of Polybius,(899) which has lately been brought to light, viz., that “in Sparta several brothers had often one wife, and that the children were brought up in common.” If we may here infer a misrepresentation, to which the Spartan institutions were particularly liable, it is seen how the custom just described might cause _several_ men to dwell in one house, upon the same estate, of whom _one_ only had a wife. But it must be confessed that the Spartan institution was very likely to lead to the terrible abuse which Polybius mentions, particularly as the Spartan laws, as we shall see presently,(900) did not absolutely prohibit the husband from allowing the procreation of children from his wife by strangers. It is therefore possible that the Hebrew institution of the Levirate-marriage (viz., that if a man died without leaving children, his widow became the wife of her former husband’s brother, who was to raise up seed to his brother)(901) was extended in Sparta to the lifetime of the childless elder brother.