Marriage by treaty also existed even in prehistoric times. This compact (_Gifta_) is always between the blood relatives of the bride and the bridegroom. It is a presentation, a giving away (_Verschenkung_) of the bride. The parent or guardian gives her away, an act which requires no consent of the bride, but only a counter gift, or rather purchase money, from the bridegroom. Thus a kind of purchase, the symbolic pursuit of the bride (_Brautlauf_) as an imitation of the ancient marriage by capture, and the technical consummation of marriage (_Beilager_), for which the man, however, owes her a gift (_Morgengabe_), are the phases of marriage. Polygamy is the rule at first. The northern Teutons, especially the Scandinavians, practised an unmitigated polygamy down to a very late period, and only yielded after a most persistent struggle with the ethics of Christianity. As late as the eighth century the bitter accusations of the churchmen against Pepin of Heristal for having two wives, and their arraignment of Charlemagne's sins of concupiscence, show how ineradicable this ancient Teutonic usage was. However, as early as B.C. 57, Cæsar mentions King Ariovistus's marriage to two wives as an exception to Teutonic custom, due, perhaps, to political motives. Tacitus praises the Germans as those who, with few exceptions, live in monogamy, and though Tacitus is not an unimpeachable authority, owing to the fact that he wished to idealize the vigorous race as a model to the decadent Roman world of his time, his statements seem to prove that at the dawn of Christianity southern and western German tribes at least had the highest conception of family purity. Later on, under the teachings of Christianity, polygamy was first modified, then abolished; and marriage by capture was either suppressed or treated as a crime. Upon the status of women among the Teutonic tribes the study of philology sheds some light. From it we learn that the Gothic _quind_, woman (in general), and _queue_, married woman, signifies the child-bearing one, from the verb _quinan, gignere_; or _wip_ (Saxon _wif_, Old Norse _vif_), indicating the root of _wib_, motion, the mobile being; though _frouwa, frau_ (Old Norse, _freyja_), means originally "joyous, mild, gracious," and is used to signify "illustrious ladies" down to the thirteenth century.