a woman whom a person takes to cohabit with him, in the manner and under the character of a wife, without being authorized to do so by a legal marriage.

Concubine is also used for a real, legitimate, and only wife, distinguished by no other circumstance but a disparity of birth or condition between her and the husband. Du Cange observes, that one may gather from several passages in the epistles of the popes, that they anciently allowed of such concubines. The seventeenth canon of the first council of Toledo declares, that he who with a faithful wife keeps a concubine, is excommunicated; but that if the concubine served him as a wife, so that he had only one woman, under the title of concubine, he should not be rejected from communion; which shows that there were legitimate wives under the title of concubines. In effect, the Roman laws did not allow a man to espouse whom he pleased; there was required a kind of parity, or proportion, between the conditions of the contracting parties; but a woman of inferior condition, who could not be espoused as a wife, might be kept as a concubine; and the laws allowed of it, provided the man had no other wife.

It is certain the patriarchs had a great number of wives, and that these did not all hold the same rank; some being subaltern to the principal wife, or what we would now call concubines or half wives. The Romans prohibited a plurality of concubines, and only had regard to the children issuing from a single concubine, because she might become a legitimate wife. Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines; the emperor of China has sometimes two or three thousand concubines in his palace. Q. Curtius observes, that Darius was followed in his army by three hundred and sixty-five concubines, all in the equipage of queens.