and adopt the children as their own; and if a man considered another’s wife particularly prolific or virtuous he was not to hesitate to ask for her.  Bridegrooms followed the custom of capturing their brides.  An attendant, after cutting off the bride’s hair and putting a man’s garment on her, left her alone in the dark, whereupon her bridegroom visited her, returning soon, however, to his comrades.  For months—­sometimes until after children had been born—­the husband would thus be unable to see his wife.

Reading Greek literature in the light of modern science, it is interesting to note that we have in the foregoing account unmistakable allusions to several primitive customs which have prevailed among savages and barbarians in all parts of the world.[308] The Greek writers, ignorant of the revelations of anthropology regarding the evolution of human habits, assumed such customs to have been originated by particular lawgivers.  This was natural enough and pardonable under the circumstances; but how any modern writer can consider such customs (whether aboriginal or instituted by lawgivers) especially favorable to love, passes my comprehension.  Yet one of the best informed of my critics assured me that “in Sparta love was made a part of state policy, and opportunities were contrived for the young men and women to see each other at public games and become enamored.”  As usual in such cases, the writer ignores the details regarding these Spartan opportunities for seeing one another and falling in love, which would have spoiled his argument by indicating what kind of “love” was in question here.

Plutarch relates that Lycurgus made the girls strip naked and attend certain festivals and dance in that state before the youths, who were also naked.  Bachelors who refused to marry were not allowed to attend these dances, which, as Plutarch adds with characteristic Greek naivete, were “a strong incentive to marriage.”  The erudite C.O.  Mueller, in his history of the Doric race (II., 298), while confessing that in all his reading of Greek books he had not come across a single instance of an Athenian in love with a free-born woman and marrying her because of a strong attachment, declares that Sparta was somewhat different, personal attachments having been possible there because the young men and women were brought together at festivals and dances; but he has the acumen to see that this love was “not of a romantic nature."[309]

AMAZONIAN IDEAL OF GREEK WOMANHOOD

Romantic love, as distinguished from friendship, is dependent on sexual differentiation, and the highest phases of romantic love are possible only, as we have seen, where the secondary and tertiary sexual qualities, physical and mental, are highly developed.  Now the Spartans, besides maintaining all the love-suppressing customs just alluded to, made special and systematic efforts to convert their women into Amazons devoid