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# "In Britain many men sleep with one wife, and many wives lust after one husband," reports a Russian chronicler
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/vo-bretani-zhe-mnozi-muzhi-s-edinoiu-zhenoiu-spiat-i-mnogy-zheny-s-edinym-muzhem-pokhotstvuiut-soobshchaet-russkii-letopisets-2/
- Published: 2025-07-08T07:33:13.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:29:30.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Books, London, Mores, Ethnography

This is not the only mention of polygyny and polyandry in the British Isles. Already in Julius Caesar's *Commentaries on the Gallic War* there is an account containing the detail that "\[in Britain\] ten or twelve men have wives in common, and particularly brothers with brothers, and parents with their children".

A similar report is found in Strabo, but there it concerns the Irish. Later Cassius Dio wrote the same of the Caledonians.

Hume directly calls the marriage rite of the ancient Britons strange and found among no other peoples. Engels points out that this form of marriage, in which the guests of a house may lay claim to intimacy with the host's wife, is explained by the existence of group marriage among the Britons.

But in general the custom of offering one's wife to one's friends is described by authors as still existing right up to the fifteenth century, and not only in the British Isles but also in Flanders, and almost as far as Germany.