> [!quote] [How true is the idea that Spartans permitted (or even encouraged) cuckoldry as a way of producing stronger sons?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tzuh9e/how_true_is_the_idea_that_spartans_permitted_or/) via [[rAskHistorians]] on 2022-04-05 by [[76vibrochamp]] > I think there's another aspect to this that gets missed out on: this was all in the context of controlling inheritance. As Xenophon puts it: _For the wives want to take charge of two households, and the husbands want to get brothers for their sons, brothers who are members of the family and share in its influence, but claim no part of the money._ You could probably write a book on the effects of partible inheritance laws on Spartan property and citizenship, and come to think of it, Stephen Hodkinson more or less already has. > > The Spartiates are essentially "borrowing" the excess reproductive capacity of each other's wives in the same sense they borrow each other's hunting caches, hounds, horses, or slaves.