Women were handed about to cement alliances, like the Tlaxcalan noblewomen presented to Cortes and his men, and while the primary ´ wife enjoyed security and prestige, men took concubines and secondary wives as will and wealth allowed. (When nobles made offerings of their ‘own’ children for sacrifice, the children they handed over to the priests were probably the issue of these most vulnerable dependants.) ‘Adultery’ meant sexual relations with
a married woman, fornication outside marriage being no offence for the male
provided his partner were unmarried and not otherwise formally restricted, as
for example by temple vows. Other men’s concubines were apparently fair game. Mexica
prostitutes sauntered through the marketplace, and the girls in the state
brothels (almost certainly tribute girls from the provinces, not local Mexica)
were doled out to young warriors as part of their system of rewards. In such a
system women could seem no more than feeders and breeders of warriors, and
their casual toys. (Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 2014], 222)
