heir had equal right to decide concerning her.(927) If, however, the family was without female issue, and the succession had not been secured during the father’s lifetime by adoption in the presence of the king, it is probable that the heads of houses related to the surviving daughter married her to a son of their own, who was then considered as successor of the family into which he was introduced—a means employed at Athens,(928) and probably therefore at Sparta also, for preventing the extinction of families. But there were two customs peculiar to the Lacedæmonians; in the first place, a husband, if he considered that the unfruitfulness of the marriage was owing to himself (for if he considered his wife as barren he had power immediately to put her away),(929) gave his matrimonial rights to a younger and more powerful man, whose child then belonged to the family of the husband, although it was also publicly considered as related to the family of the real father.(930) The second institution was, that to the wives of men, who, for example, had fallen in war before they had begotten any children, other men (probably slaves) were assigned, in order to produce heirs and successors, not to themselves, but to the deceased husband.(931) Both these customs, which appear to us so singular (though similar regulations existed in the constitution of Solon), originated from the superstitious dread of the destruction of a family. When this motive lost its power upon the mind, these ancient institutions were probably also lost, and the population and number of families were continually diminished.