46 RESTRICTIONS IN MARRIAGE.
mothers all living at the same time, namely, Leah, and her sister Rachel, and their respective handmaids Billah and Zilpah. Long afterwards, the Jewish kings emulated the luxurious habits of neighbouring potentates and carried polygamy to an extreme degree. For Solomon, see I Kings xi. 3. For his son Rehoboam, see II Chron. xi. 21. The history of the subsequent practice of the custom among the Jews is obscure, but the Talmud contains no law against polygamy, It must have ceased in Judaea by the time of the Christian Era. It was not then allowed in either Greece or Rome. Polygamy was unchecked by law in profligate Egypt, but a reactionary and ascetic spirit existed, and some celibate communities were formed in the service of Isis, who seem to have exercised a large though indirect influence in introducing celibacy into the early Christian Church. The restriction of marriage to one living wife subsequently became the religion and the law of all Christian nations, though licence has been widely tolerated in royal and other distinguished , families, as in those of some of our English kings. Polygamy was openly introduced into Mormonism by Brigham Young, who left seventeen wives, and fifty-six children. He died in 1877; polygamy was suppressed soon after (Encyc. Brit., xvi. 827.)
It is unnecessary for my present purpose to go further into the voluminous data con-