All the languages of the world are not sufficient to express the filth of polygamy. It makes of man a beast, of woman, a trembling slave. It destroys the fireside, makes virtue an outcast, takes from human speech its sweetest words, and leaves the heart a den, where crawl and hiss the slimy serpents of most loathsome lust. … The marriage of the one man to the one woman is the citadel and fortress of civilization. Without this, woman becomes the prey and slave of lust and power, and man goes back to savagery and crime.
So proclaims the great agnostic orator of the 19th century, Robert Ingersoll, in his meditation Some Mistakes of Moses.
But did Moses really make a mistake? Does the Bible allow polygamy?
Path of the Beagle 