Special Political Discourses on Domestic Society and the Rights of Citizens

On the Species. Discourse I.

VII. In the meantime, however, we should not side with Socrates or Euripides A tradition, likely apocryphal, suggested that Socrates and Euripides were permitted two wives to help replenish the population of Athens in being so devoted to increasing the number of citizens that we claim it is permissible to bring in a second wife over the first. (This was, however, pleasing to Caesar, as Suetonius notes in the Life of Caesar, chapter 52.) For indeed, polygamy Polygamy: the practice of having more than one spouse at the same time conflicts with the original institution of marriage, as well as with ethical truth; see Pierre Charron, Of Wisdom, book 1, chapter 48, number 10, etc. For in marriage, the highest form of friendship is required; and reason itself teaches that such friendship can hardly exist between more than two people. This is because "he who is a friend to many is a friend to no one," as Piccolomini notes in On Morals, grade 7, chapter 15. And just as honey or wine is made watery when even a very small amount of water is mixed in, so too in this state of polygamy, love—insofar as it is forced to extend to many—becomes in a sense "watery," original Greek: υδαρής (hydarēs) as Aristotle speaks of it. See Beza’s Treatise on Polygamy; Johann Forster, Disputations on the Decalogue, 1st decade, problem 7; Balthasar Meisner, Treatise on Laws, page 26; Mexia, book 2, chapter 13; Dr. Harpprecht, on the Institutes regarding Paternal Power, section 1, number 23; Bronchorst, 1st Miscellany, 99; Arnisæus, On the Right of Marriage, 4, section 3; Clemens Timpler, 1st book of Economics, 4, question 7.

Although Bodin, in On the Republic, book 5, chapter 1, page 506 and Method of History, chapter 5, argues that polygamy is a matter of Natural Law in those places where there are more women than men. Nor does the polygamy of the Tartars A historical term for Mongolic and Turkic peoples of Central and Northern Asia displease Michalon in his 7th fragment. Even Paracelsus The famous Swiss physician and occultist does not entirely disapprove of it in his Treatise on the Inventors of the Arts, treatise 2, page 172.

In terms of ethics, it also seems worth relating that a certain Prince of Hesse Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse (1504–1567), whose bigamy was a major scandal of the Reformation preferred to be permitted two wives by a great theologian Likely a reference to Martin Luther or Philipp Melanchthon, who gave secret approval to Philip's bigamy to prevent his adultery rather than engage in fornications, as Thuanus reports in book 39, page 815. This is something I do not understand. Here it is appropriately asked whether the Patriarch Jacob and others in the Old Testament, who took two wives at once (or had one primary wife and another, and besides these, secondary wives and several concubines at the same time, according to Drusius on Genesis chapter 65 and Deuteronomy chapter 81), were sinning. Danaeus asserts this in his Christian Ethics, book 2, chapter 14. And truly, I am inclined to recognize this as a blemish original Latin: nævum, literally a mole or birthmark, used here to mean a moral flaw (from which even the holiest men were not free). See Chemnitz, part 2, Examination of the Council of Trent, page 233; Aegidius Hunnius, on Matthew chapter 19; Meisner, on Sober Philosophy, part 1, section 2, chapter 5, question 1; Winckler, On the Principles of Law, book 3, chapter 10.

This is especially so since polygamy is found to be prohibited even by Mosaic Law in Leviticus 18, verse 18, as Tremellius, Dr. Hafenreffer (On Marriage, page 633), and Arnisæus (On Marriage, chapter 4, section 2) note; add to this Malachi, chapter 2, verse 11, etc. and Drusius on the passage in Leviticus, chapter 10. And the wise Hebrews, in their detestation of polygamy, say: "He who multiplies wives, multiplies sorceresses." A quote from the Pirkei Avot (Chapters of the Fathers), a compilation of ethical teachings from the Mishnaic period Chapters of the Fathers, page number 14. Romulus and Numa The first and second kings of Rome, credited with establishing its legal and religious foundations weighed this same law in their own Statutes...