In a similar way, by antiphrasis, the name of _coccyx_, a cuckoo, was given to the poor husband into whose nest a stranger intruded. Pliny, the naturalist, says: _"Coccyx ova subdit in nidis alienis; ita plerique alienas uxores faciunt matres"_--"the cuckoo deposits its eggs in the nest of other birds; so the Romans not unfrequently made mothers of the wives of their friends." The comparison is not over just. _Coccyx_ signifying a cuckoo, we have made it _cuckold_. What a number of things do we owe to the Romans! But as the sense of all words is subject to change, the term applied to _cuckold_, which, according to good grammar, should be the gallant, is appropriated to the _husband_. Some of the learned assert that it is to the Greeks we owe the emblem of the _horns_, and that they bestowed the appellation of _goat_ upon a husband the disposition of whose wife resembled that of a female of the same species. Indeed, they used the epithet _son of a goat_ in the same way as the modern vulgar do an appellation which is much more literal. These vile terms are no longer made use of in good company. Even the word _adultery_ is never pronounced. We do not now say, _"Madame la Duchesse_ lives in adultery with _Monsieur le Chevalier_--_Madame la Marquise_ has a criminal intimacy with _Monsieur l'Abbé;"_ but we say, _"Monsieur l'Abbé_ is this week the lover of _Madame la Marquise_." When ladies talk of their adulteries to their female friends, they say, "I confess I have some inclination for _him_." They used formerly to confess that they felt some _esteem_, but since the time when a certain citizen's wife accused herself to her confessor of having _esteem_ for a counsellor, and the confessor inquired as to the number of proofs of esteem afforded, ladies of quality have _esteemed_ no one and gone but little to confession. The women of Lacedæmon, we are told, knew neither confession nor adultery. It is true that Menelaus had experienced the intractability of Helen, but Lycurgus set all right by making the women common, when the husbands were willing to lend them and the wives consented. Every one might dispose of his own. In this case a husband had not to apprehend that he should foster in his house the offspring of a stranger; all children belonged to the republic, and not to any particular family, so that no one was injured. Adultery is an evil only inasmuch as it is a theft; but we do not steal that which is given to us. The Lacedæmonians, therefore, had good reason for saying that adultery was impossible among them. It is otherwise in our modern nations, where every law is founded on the principle of _meum_ and _tuum_.