Kitap 12
6
It is not, again, likely that the Lacedaemonians should themselves send their young men home from theThe reason of the women of Locris (in Greece) leaving their homes with the slaves. camp for the sake of begetting children, and should refuse to allow the Locrians to do the same. Two things in such a statement are not only improbable but untrue. In the first place, they were not likely to have prevented the Locrians doing so, when they did the same themselves, for that would be wholly inconsistent: nor were the Locrians, in obedience to orders from them, likely to have adopted a custom like theirs. (For in Sparta it is a traditional law, and a matter of common custom, for three or four men to have one wife, and even more if they are brothers; and when a man has begotten enough children, it is quite proper and usual for him to sell his wife to one of his friends.) The fact is, that though the Locrians, not being bound by the same oath as the Lacedaemonians, that they would not return home till they had taken Messene, had a fair pretext for not taking part in the common expedition;lines 32 and 33: had a fair pretext for not taking part in the common expedition should read very naturally took no part in the general despatch of men home to their wives. yet, by returning home only one by one, and at rare intervals, they gave their wives an opportunity of becoming familiar with the slaves instead of their original husbands, and still more so the unmarried women. And this was the reason of the migration. . . .
