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Original Articles

A peculiar institution? Greco–Roman monogamy in global context

Pages 280-291 | Published online: 03 Jan 2012
 

Abstract

In what sense were the ancient Greeks and Romans monogamous, and why does it matter? This paper addresses this question from a transdisciplinary and global cross-cultural perspective. It considers the physical and anthropological record of polygyny, delineates the historical expansion of formal monogamy, and critiques complementary social science models of mate choice. This approach allows us to situate Greco–Roman practice on a spectrum from traditional polygamy to more recent forms of normative monogyny. Whilst Greco–Roman legal and social norms stressed the nexus between monogamous unions and legitimate reproduction, they accommodated a variety of men's polygynous relationships outside the nuclear family. Greco–Roman monogamy's historically most significant consequence was its role in shaping Christian and later ‘Western’ marital norms that eventually gained global influence.

Notes

1 Erdmann, Citation1934, pp. 87-103 appears to be the most substantial discussion of Greek monogamy and polygyny. Recent scholarship on the Greek and Roman families usually gives short shrift to or completely ignores this issue: for rare exceptions, see Friedl, Citation1996, esp. pp. 25-39, 214-228, 380-394; Ogden, Citation1999. Monogamy is not even mentioned in the index of Krause, Citation1992, a bibliography of 4,336 titles on the Roman family. Under the label “monogamy,” Treggiari, Citation1991, pp. 229-319 focuses on spousal affection, perennial monogamy, and adultery. Greco–Roman monogamy has mostly been problematized by scholars from outside the field of Ancient History: see esp. MacDonald, Citation1990, pp. 204-227; Betzig, Citation1992a,Citationb.

2 For the sake of clarity, in the following I apply the terms “monogamy” and “polygamy” only to marital unions and use “monogyny” and “polygyny” more broadly to denote exclusive or parallel sexual and reproductive relationships. “Polygynous polygamy” is meant to specify the nature of polygamous arrangements, and “polygyny” may but need not include “polygynous polygamy.” Marital polyandry has been extremely rare in world history and will not be considered here.

3 For extreme genetic manifestations of this phenomenon, see Zerja et al., Citation2003 (8% of Central Asian men may descend from Genghis Khan); Xue et al. Citation2005 (1.6 million Chinese and Mongolian men may descend from the Qing dynasty).

4 Murdock, Citation1967, pp. 62-125. Murdock, Citation1981 surveys the 563 best-known of 1,264 societies. In this sample, independent monogamous families account for 11.7% of the total (n=66) (133 table 4).

5 Murdock, Citation1967, pp. 82, 86. In the same vein, Manchu and northern Chinese are likewise counted as “monogamous” (86).

6 For developmental differentiation, see below, at n.9.

7 Burton et al., Citation1996, pp. 100-104, with Jones, Citation2003: 509-510. The “Middle Old World” encompasses North Africa, the south Balkans, and most of Asia except for Siberia and South-East Asia, with most of Europe and Siberia defined as “North Eurasia & Circumpolar.”

8 For the concepts of EIM and SIM, see Alexander et al., Citation1979, pp. 418-420. “SIUM” is my own coinage.

9 Nielsen, Citation2004, p. 306 table 10, p. 309. The overall incidence is 17.9% (n=857).

10 Nielsen's claim (Citation2004, pp. 309-310) that maximum harem size was smaller in agrarian than in advanced horticultural polygynous societies is invalidated by the exclusion from his sample of many of the most egregious instances of harem polygyny in agrarian empires (cf. the dataset in Betzig, Citation1986, pp. 107-133).

11 Scheidel, Citation2009, pp. 289-294. For temporary emergency authorization of bigamy in Athens following massive male casualties in the Peloponnesian War in the late fifth century BCE, see Ogden, Citation1996, pp. 72-75.

12 Scheidel, Citation2009, section 3.5. Quote from the Codex Iustinianus 7.15.3.2.

13 On the serial aspect of monogamy in general see esp. Fischer, Citation1989.

14 Friedman, Citation1982 discusses evidence for the survival of Jewish bigamy in medieval Egypt.

15 Anabaptists: Cairncross, Citation1974, pp. 1-53; and cf. pp. 74-89 on the Christian monogamy-polygamy debate engendered by the Thirty Years War. Mormons: e.g., Kern, Citation1981, pp. 135-204; Foster, Citation1984, pp. 123-225; Van Wagoner, Citation1989. The church leadership renounced plural marriage in 1890 and more forcefully in 1904. For contemporary Mormon polygamy, see, e.g., Altman and Ginat, Citation1996.

16 Becker, Citation1974=Febrero and Schwartz, Citation1995, pp. 316-317; Grossbard, Citation1980, esp. p. 324; Becker, Citation1991, esp. pp. 87, 89. Becker, Citation1991, pp. 80-107 provides the fullest formal analysis of the economics of polygyny. Cf. also CitationBergstrom, in press.

17 For simple illustrations of the main point, see Wright, Citation1994, p. 97, repeated by Kanazawa and Still, Citation1999, pp. 27-28.

18 This observation is distinct from the notion that polygyny favors male polygynists if women produce gains other than children, especially by contributing to subsistence. This is held to be important in horticultural systems where women do much of the farm work (e.g., Boserup, Citation1970, p. 50; Goody, Citation1976, pp. 34, 129; cf. also Sanderson, Citation2001, p. 331). However, Bretschneider, Citation1995, pp. 177-179 finds little support for the concept of “wealth-increasing polygyny” (cf. White, Citation1988, pp. 549-550). Jacoby, Citation1995, p. 965 observes that while women in Cote d'Ivoire prefer wealthy men as spouses, they more specifically favor men on whose farms their (i.e. the women's) labor is more productive. In this scenario, male polygynists gain both in terms of production and reproduction.

19 Kanazawa and Still, Citation1999, pp. 32-35. Sellen and Hruschka, Citation2004 observe that the principle that “marital unions are more commonly and more highly polygynous when men differentially control access to material resources, particularly where those resources are valuable, renewable, and heritable” (707) mutatis mutandis also extends to foraging populations, with control of access to hunting and fishing sites serving as the critical variable.

20 Kanazawa and Still, Citation1999, pp. 34-35 (simulations), 35-41 (empirical tests). By contrast, the evidence does not show a negative correlation between democracy and polygyny; cf. below.

21 Kanazawa, Citation2001a, pp. 338-340 defends the concept of female mate choice against the assumption that males made the decisions but does not consider female choice mediated by kin.

22 As already noted by Sanderson, Citation2001, p. 330. It makes little sense for Kanazawa and Still, Citation1999 to present their female choice model as an alternative what they call the “male compromise theory” of monogamy, described below under the rubric of “male choice” (i.e., men banning polygamy as an intra-group bargaining strategy), which ultimately seeks to account for normative monogamy rather than the relative incidence of monogamy and polygamy. In my view there is no direct conflict between these approaches: “male choice” theory is an auxiliary hypothesis that must be joined to “female choice” theory in order to explain the phenomenon of SIUM.

23 For the correlation between sexual dimorphism (a proxy of polygyny, see above) and the intensity of male–male conflict in other species, see esp. Alexander et al., Citation1979; Mitani, Gros-Louis, & Richards, Citation1996; Weckerly, Citation1998.

24 Alexander, Citation1987, p. 71. For a formal model in which polygyny is constrained by a ruler's need to discourage rivals, see now Lagerlöf, Citation2007. This scenario could easily be expanded to cover elites more generally.

25 See esp. Betzig, Citation1993; Scheidel, Citation2009. White & Burton, Citation1988 maintain that the incidence of warfare for plunder and capture of women is positively correlated with the incidence of polygyny, and Bretschneider, Citation1995 finds that in the 186 societies of the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample polygyny is a positive correlate of successful inter-group warfare.

26 Alexander et al., Citation1979, pp. 432-433. In a somewhat different vein, cf. Nielsen, Citation2004, p. 312 for the possibility of a connection between increasing freedom and SIUM. But cf. below, n.41.

27 Emphasized by Wilson, Citation1995, p. 37. Cf. also Price, Citation1999, pp. 29-30, 55.

28 None of the six reasons invoked by Price, Citation1999, pp. 56-7 seem to me particularly compelling; however, detailed discussion of his unpublished arguments would be out of place here. It is also unwarranted to suppose (ibid. 44) that non-colonized countries eventually embraced SIUM not just “because they began recognizing Western economic and political dominance” but more specifically “in order to remain competitive with traditionally Christian nations.” Westernization entailed the adoption of whole bundles of European institutions and there is nothing to suggest that for these “late adopters” SIUM per se was–or was thought of as being–imbued with competitiveness-enhancing properties. Cf. however Lagerlöf, Citation2007, p. 22 for the observation that according to his own model population growth endogenously reduces polygyny.

29 See esp. Tertilt, Citation2005 for a model predicting that banning polygyny in sub-Saharan Africa would reduce fertility and greatly increase savings and per capita output. Cf. also Schoellman and Tertilt, Citation2006; Tertilt, Citation2006.

30 The same is necessarily true of the analogous argument by Hartmann, Citation2004 that seeks to trace “Western” progress to the north-western European pattern of late marriage. Recent scholarship on the putative causes of the “rise of the West” is too rich to reference here even selectively.

31 Betzig, Citation1986, pp. 103-106; 1993b. Note that her emphasis on recent economic development is consistent with the premise of Gould et al., Citation2008.

32 Contra Herlihy, Citation1995, p. 578; MacDonald, Citation1995, p. 4. Effective polygyny: Betzig, Citation1992a,Citationb, Citation1995, Citation2002. Cf. also Price, Citation1999, pp. 18-22 for discussion.

33 I therefore agree with Price that Betzig's approach elides the significance of SI(U)M, regardless of how effective it was in practice.

34 It is unknown whether some form of resource polygyny was practiced in Minoan and/or Mycenaean culture. Other analogies to Near Eastern palace cultures might make this seem plausible.

35 The most recent discussions include Hansen, Citation2006; Morris and Powell, Citation2006, pp. 72-92, 148-170; Raaflaub and Wallace, Citation2007; Hall, Citation2007, pp. 119-202.

36 Lape, Citation2002/2003, pp. 119-120. See also ibid. 131: “Since the men most likely to father bastard children were those who could afford to do so, namely men with enough wealth to support multiple women and children, the family legislation articulates a class bias against the wealthy and aristocratic.”

37 E.g., Morris, Citation2000, pp. 138-144; Citation2004. However, resource inequality among Spartan citizens rose dramatically over time: Hodkinson, Citation2000 is the fullest account.

38 It is also hard to account for the spread and intensification of SIUM in post-ancient Europe where inequality was often more pronounced than in ancient poleis and, indeed, steadily increased from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries: e.g., Hoffman, Jacks, Levin, & Lindert, Citation2002. Cf. already MacDonald, Citation2001, p. 346. These developments occurred before the growth of human capital turned it into a decisive variable: cf. above, on Gould et al., Citation2008.

39 On the former, see, e.g., Chagnon, Citation1979; on the latter, see the motley collection of case studies in Hansen, Citation2000, Citation2002.

40 Republicanism is also a weak correlate: if the historiographical tradition is correct, Rome and perhaps also other surrounding city-states were initially ruled by kings. Cf. below for the lack of correlation between democracy and monogamy today.

41 Alexander, Citation1987, p. 72, refuted by Kanazawa and Still, Citation1999, pp. 38-41.

42 Thus Herlihy, Citation1995, p. 581. He means “sexual equality” among male citizens.

43 However, one might also envision an alternative model where resource and reproductive inequalities foster cooperation by encouraging inter-group aggression for the purpose of obtaining either captive women or resources that could be used to obtain women. In this scenario, inequality could have served as an endogenous engine of cooperation. Cf. White and Burton, Citation1988 for the motives of warfare in polygynous settings.

44 Cf. Patterson, Citation1982, pp. 105-131 for global variation in the provenance of slaves.

45 Finley, Citation1981, pp. 165-166; Citation1998, pp. 157-158 (with Morris, Citation2001, pp. 29-41); Patterson, Citation1991, pp. 64-81; Miller, Citation2008. In Sparta, access to helot women may have sustained effective polygyny among male citizens: Scheidel, Citation2009, pp. 293-294.

46 Schremer, Citation1997/2001 and Satlow, Citation2001, pp. 189-192 discuss the evidence for Jewish polygyny in the New Testament period and the Rabbinic tradition. In 393 CE a Roman law explicitly forbade Jews to contract plural marriages (Justinianic Code 1.9.7).

47 The neglect of this phenomenon by historians is astounding in its pervasiveness: there are now more recent book-length studies of incest in various historical societies (e.g., Archibald, Citation2001; Héritier, Citation2002; Moreau, Citation2002; Van Gelder, Citation2005) than of monogamy and polygamy prior to the onset of Mormonism. I hope to address this deficit in a future monograph.

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