POLYAMORY LOVE IN DEPTH
Larry the Cat,
The Profound Mystery
To a modern western audience, the fact that ancient Greeks and Romans were not supposed to be married to more than one person at any given time, nor even to cohabit with others alongside legal spouses, must seem perfectly ‘normal’. This may explain why this practice has received hardly any attention from historians of the classical world.
Yet from a global, cross-cultural perspective, there is nothing ‘normal’ or unremarkable about this. Instead, until very recently, polygynous arrangements of marriage or cohabitation were the norm in world history, and strict monogamy remained an exception. Barely one in six of the 1,195 societies surveyed in the largest anthropological dataset have been classified as ‘monogamous’, while polygyny was frequently considered the preferred choice even.
Smaller samples of better documented societies convey a similar picture, and while ‘monogamy’ is observed in a small proportion of all cases (16-20% in samples of 348 and 862 systems: Murdock (1967); Burton et al. (1996)), due to their failure to distinguish between rare instances of polygamy and its formal prohibition these surveys tend to overestimate the actual incidence of strictly monogamous rules. In fact, although the nature of the evidence does not allow us to rule out the existence of strictly monogamous systems prior to the first millennium BCE, the earliest unequivocal documentation originates from the archaic Greek and early Roman periods.
Thus, even though Greeks and Romans need not have been the first cultures to prescribe monogamy, these are the earliest securely attested cases and, moreover, established a paradigm for subsequent periods that eventually attained global dominance. In this sense, Greco-Roman monogamy may well be the single most important phenomenon of ancient history that has remained widely unrecognized. What is more, the global positive correlation between patricentric kinship systems and polygyny (Burton et al. (1996) 93-4) renders the emergence of prescriptive monogamy in the patricentric societies of Greece and Rome even more remarkable.
If marriage is a sacrament then must be the profound care inside several holy marriages to the end of life care, being at least a confirmation of Christianity. pṓ - lig´a - 1001 Meaning of the Term. To the Origin of Polygamy. By The Old Testament and Polygamy. For Polygamy Unnatural. The Eunuch. On the Weakness of Polygamy.
The King's Garden
In Nehemiah (3:15) , mention is made of "the pool of Shelah by the king's garden"; in 2 Kings (25:4) Jeremiah (52:7) All the men of war fled by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king's garden"; see also Jeremiah (39:4). The 'king's winepresses, Zechariah (14:10), which must have been to the extreme South of the city, were clearly in this neighborhood.
The references all point to the one situation in Jerusalem where it is possible for gardens to flourish all the year round, namely, the part of the Kidron valley below the Tyropoeon which is watered by the overflow from the Pool of Siloam. Here the vegetable gardens of the peasants of Siloam present an aspect of green freshness unknown elsewhere in Jerusalem.
Polyamory and Marriage
Then the angel showed me a river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb / down the middle of the main street of the city. On either side of the river stood a tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit and yielding a fresh crop for each month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
Eden Restored
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Revelation (22:1-2)
1. Meaning of the Term
Polygamy has been and is the open blazon by the human race of sex vice. The very term is a misnomer. Since man became moralized he has apprehended that the proper marriage relation between the sexes is monogamy. Whatever may have been the practice, since man could ask himself, What is right? he has known that ἀπ ἀρχῆς , ap' archḗs ("from the beginning," Matthew 19:4 ), au fond , at bottom, marriage is the choice of one man and one woman of each other for a life family relation.
La Rochefoucauld said: "Hypocrisy is a sort of homage which vice pays to virtue." There is hypocrisy beneath the word polygamy. It is an attempt to cover up by the term "plural marriage" what is not marriage and cannot be marriage. There is no particular need of defining what the condition is, so long as we can look upon it as a violation and negation of the marriage relation. The very use of the term from any language covering a like condition is attempt -
Delivery Court of Heaven
To serve the Devil in Polygamy is a general term and might mean a multiplicity of partners in the family relation by one of either sex. But it does not. Polygamy practically means exactly "polygyny" ( γυνή , gunḗ ), i.e. it describes a many-wived man.
The correlative term "polyandry" describes the condition of a woman who has many men in family relation with herself. They are all husbands to her, as in polygamy all the women are wives to one man. But polyandry in historic times has had so little illustration that it may be dismissed as so exceptional as to be worthy of no further notice here.
Why polygamy has captured the whole position philologically covered by polygyny is readily apparent. The might of the physically strongest has dictated the situation. Man has on the average one-fourth more muscular force than woman. When it comes to wrong in sex relation, man has that advantage, and it has given him the field covered by the word "polygamy." There he is master and woman is the victim.
On the Origin of Polygamy
It is plainly evident that polygamy is primarily largely the outcome of tribal wars. When men had separated into clans and had taken up different places of abode, collisions would soon occur between them. What would happen in such cases would be what we know did happen in North America soon after its first settlement by Europeans, to wit, the destruction of the Hurons by the Iroquois.
The great majority of the men were massacred; the women and children, driven to the abode of the conquerors, disappearing there mainly in concubinage and slavery. What shall be done with this surplus of women? Here again the might of the strongest comes to the front. The chief or the most heroic fighter would assert his right to choice of captives, and thus concubinage or what is the same thing - polygamy - would be set up. Successes in further wars come and add other women to be distributed.
Of course to the sheik or king there soon comes the seraglio and the harem. Polygamous practices will come in in other ways. The prisoner of war becomes property and passes from hand to hand by gift or sale. So woman - the weaker party - endures what comes to her as slave, concubine. We have now no longer the "helpmeet" originally destined for man - "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" - for whom he would "leave his father and his mother" and to whose single self he would "cleave" for life (Genesis 2:18 , Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5 , Matthew 19:6 ).
Afterlife of Greco-Roman Monogamy
As both the notion of civic rights and the institution of chattel slavery declined in the GrecoRoman world of the later Roman Empire, Christianity maintained and reinforced monogamous norms. The canonical New Testament tradition has Jesus take sides in Jewish debates about the propriety of divorce in a way that implies rejection of any non-monogamous practices (Matthew 19.3-12; Mark 10.2-12; Brewer (2000) 89-100).
The roughly contemporaneous Qumran movement likewise opposed polygamy (Brewer (2000) 80-2). Pauline doctrine, however, fails explicitly to address this issue (Brewer (2000) 104). Later Church Fathers saw fit to explain away Old Testament polygamy as motivated by God’s command to populate the world, an expansion that was no longer necessary or desirable (e.g., Clark (1986) 147).
However, monogamy per se does not play a central role in early Christian writings, and the fact that Augustine labeled it a ‘Roman custom’ (On the Good of Marriage 7) indicates that Christianity may simply have appropriated it as an element of mainstream Greco-Roman culture.
In the last days the mountain of the house of the LORD will be established as the chief of the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. / And many peoples will come and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us His ways so that we may walk in His paths.” For the law will go forth from Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. / Then He will judge between the nations and arbitrate for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer take up the sword against nation, nor train anymore for war.
The Old Testament and Polygamy
The complications introduced into morals by polygamy are not often considered. But the Bible sets them forth in plainness. The marriage of Abraham and Sarah seems to have been an original love match, and even to have preserved something of that character through life. Still we find Sarah under the influence of polygamous ideas, presenting Abraham with a concubine.
Yet afterward, when she herself had a son, she induced Abraham to drive out into the wilderness this concubine and her son. Now Abraham was humane and kind, and it is said "The thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight" (Genesis 21:11 ). But he was in the toils of polygamy, and it brought him pain and retribution. A D ivine direction may be hard to bear.
The conditions of Jacob's marriages were such that it is hard to say whether any of his children were of any other than of polygamous origin (Genesis 35:22-26 ). Where the family idea and affection went, in such mixed condition, is evidenced by the unblushing sale, for slavery in Egypt, of one of the brothers by the others (Genesis 37:28 ).
David was a singer of sweet and noble songs and wanted to be a righteous man with his whole heart. Yet, probably in common with all the military leaders and kings of the earth of his day, he had a polygamous career.
His retributions ran along an extended line. There was a case of incest and murder among his children (2 Samuel 13 ). The son in whom he had most hope and pride organized treason against his throne, and lost his life in the attempt. David left his kingdom to Solomon, of whom much might be said, but of whom this can be said - evidently originally a man bright, keen-witted, wise, yet in his old age he went to pieces by the wiles of the women with whom he had loaded his harem.
Partly by his extravagance in his polygamous life, and partly in attempt to build temples in distant places for the religions represented by the inmates of his harem, he bankrupted his nation. As a consequence his kingdom was divided at his death, and there was never again a united Israel (1 Kings 11:12 ). Polygamy may be justly charged with these untoward results.
Polygamy Unnatural
It can be demonstrated scientifically, even mathematically, that polygamy is a moral wrong. Statistics show that births are substantially equally divided between the sexes. Excess seems slightly on the side of males. When this fact is considered and also the fact of the wide prevalence of polygamy, it would seem that polygamy (polygyny) is a greater crime against Nature than polyandry. To put out of view for a moment the wrong to woman in denying to her the rights and privileges of monogamous marriage, the interference with the rights of man to such marriage looms up in vast proportion. Every harem is the denial to men of the right to seek among its inmates wives according to the dictates of their own hearts.
But we are not done with the of enogh as crime against man. Given a harem, and he who set it up has made, or there brought, the eunuch. The lord of the harem must be served by emasculated men. A search in history will reveal an amount of this wickedness that is past belief. The eunuch has been everywhere among all nations and peoples and tongues.
They have not only been servitors to women in harems, but they have acquired such influence with their masters that they have sometimes even dictated the policy of government. They have been the secret cabinet that has had the last word in public affairs. They have sometimes held public positions and shown therein astonishing ability. Witness Narses, the brilliant general of the emperor Justinian.
Weakness of Polygamy
Gibbon noticed the fact that nations began to decline in power when their policies were dictated and managed by eunuchs. But that is taking a symptom for the disease. There are weaknesses behind that weakness.
We have found woman in muscular strength equal to three-fourths of a man. If we claim nothing more for woman than that ratio through the whole scale of her potencies, what would be thought of a nation that should try to reduce that three-fourths of potency as nearly to zero as it could? This is what polygamy has done - reduced woman as nearly to a cipher as it could in all the departments of her being.
She has been held to the lowest and most primitive industrial pursuits. She has been deprived of intellectual development. She has been debarred from society, permitted to look at it only through a home lattice, or, if abroad, through a swathod face. The harem of sheik or sultan has fixed the condition of woman in province or nation - set the bounds to her life. The highest office assigned her has been breeder of children, and for one-half of them - the daughters - she could have no possible hope or ambition. See Woman.
Where in such degradation is the "helpmeet" for man in all his problems? This condition is reflected back over man. What possible appeal can there be to him for thought and energy except to repeat the same dull round exhibited in his daily life?
Polygamous nations have never been industrial inventors, have contributed little to science. They have usually ruined the fertility of the lands they have occupied. They have been heavily weighted with the lethargy of a system that appeals to nothing but the most primitive instincts and vices of man.
The monogamous have been the forceful nations. Rome conquered the world while she was monogamous, and lost control of it when she dropped to the moral level of the sex corruption of the peoples that she had conquered. The Teuton trundled into and over Europe in ox-carts mounted on solid wood trucks. But his cart carried one wife, and now all polygamy is held under the trained guns of the Tenton.
Prescriptive monogamy came under pressure as the Roman Empire unraveled: powerful neighbors and conquerors, from Zoroastrian Iranians and Islamic Arabs to nominally or not at all Christian Germans and later Slavs, Norse, and steppe populations, did not subscribe to comparable marital norms. In the East, the Sasanid Empire with its polygamous elite (Hjerrild (2003)) was replaced by Islamic polities.
The Qu’ran prefers monogamy and tolerates plural marriage only if it is feasible and serves the interests of individuals who would not otherwise be provided for: ‘If you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with them [i.e., as wives], then only one’ (Qur’an 4.3).
Post-Roman Germanic practices are less well documented but polygamy and parallel concubinage did occur; only one of the several Germanic Roman-style law codes outlawed polygamy (Brundage (1987) 128-33). Thus, Germanic arrangements do not appear to have differed greatly from the polygynous dealings recorded in the early medieval Irish tradition (Bitel (2002) 180-1, 184; cf. Ross (1985)).
Under these circumstances, Greco-Roman-style prescriptive monogamy found itself in a precarious position, and its eventual expansion as a Christian institution was by no means a foregone conclusion. The unfolding of this drawn-out process is well beyond the remit of this chapter. Suffice it to say that the very considerable normative power of monogamy within Christianity is highlighted by the fact that sectarian polygamy – among the Anabaptists of Münster in the early sixteenth century and the first generations of the Mormons – remained a sporadic fringe phenomenon.
In recent centuries, western-style prescriptive monogamy achieved global reach through demic diffusion and acculturation, with the areas least affected by European 7 influence (the Middle East and tropical Africa) showing the greatest resilience of polygamous preference. These developments can ultimately be traced back to Greek and Roman conventions and form an element of our Greco-Roman heritage that deserves a far more prominent status in our historical consciousness than it has so far achieved.
There may seem to be two exceptions - the establishment of the Mogul empire in India and the subjugation of Western Asia and Eastern Europe by the Turk. That in both cases there was great success in war is granted. They were authorized by their religion to exhibit the frenzy of bloodshed and indulge in lust. Indeed, enjoyment of the latter was a bright hope for the life to come. But when they had possession of a country, and massacres and ravishing were over, what then? For what is mankind indebted to them?
Thoughts at Lady Diana
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