In primitive Greece the position of woman was little better. On one hand, the Iliad tells us that the epithet “woman” thrown at a man was the most contemptuous insult;[582] on the other hand, we have seen that the girl was purchased by the husband, either by presents or by services rendered to the father;[583] in short, that the husband might have domestic concubines with the sole reservation that their children did not inherit from him.[584] In the first chant of the Odyssey the severe apostrophe of Telemachus to his mother proves also that in the absence of the husband the wife was humbly submissive to her sons. “Go to thy chamber; attend to thy work; turn the spinning wheel; weave the linen; see that thy servants do their tasks. Speech belongs to men, and especially to me, who am the master here.”[585] Penelope, like a well-trained woman, meekly allows herself to be silenced and obeys, “bearing in her mind the sage discourse of her son.”
In later times the virtuous woman was shut up in the gyneceum, where she could only receive her parents or the friends authorised by her husband.[586] She was not even admitted to festivities. But, while the wife was semi-cloistered in the conjugal house, the husband could at will frequent and court the hetaïræ (ἑταίραι), and the strangers (ξέναι) with whom the citizens of Athens had not the jus connubii, and who were not admitted like the well-born or native Athenian woman (ελευθέρα) to the thesmophors.[587]
It is evident that at Athens primitive marriage was regulated by the man with very little heed to the tastes or preferences of the woman. At Sparta it was the sentiment of strict and zealous patriotism which inspired Lycurgus in all his regulations regarding marriage. The obligation of marriage was legal, like the military service. The young men were attracted to it by making them assist at the gymnastic exercises of naked young girls. “This was an incentive to marriage, and, to use Plato’s expression, drew them almost as necessarily by the attraction of love as a geometrical conclusion is drawn from the premises.”[588] In the supreme interest of population, love was forced on young men, but it was for the sake of fertility. The young married couple were not allowed to meet except in secret until the first pregnancy.[589] It was praiseworthy for an old husband to lend his young wife to a handsome young man, by whom she might have a child.
In our own day it is not very rare, particularly in France, to see poor young men marry rich old women. Solon did not permit this conjugal prostitution of man at Athens. “A censor,” says Plutarch, “finding a young man in the house of a rich old woman, fattening as they say a partridge fattens by his services to the female, would remove him to some young girl who wanted a husband.”[590] At Sparta Lycurgus went as far as to put hardened celibates under the ban of society. In the first place, they were not permitted to see these exercises of the naked virgins; and the magistrates commanded them to march naked round the market-place in winter, and to sing a song composed against themselves.... They were also deprived of that honour and respect which the young pay to the old.[591]
The young Greek girl could not dispose of her person any more than the Chinese or Hindoo woman could. She was married by her father; in default of her father, by her brother of the same blood; in default of a brother, by a paternal grandfather.[592] The right of brothers who were heirs to their father to marry their sister was not even exhausted by a first marriage.[593] The father of the family had the power either to marry his daughter during his lifetime, or to bequeath her by will, as well as her mother, who was assimilated, like her, to chattels or property. “Demosthenes, my father, bequeathed his fortune, which was fourteen talents, myself, aged seven years, my sister, aged five years, and our mother. At the moment of dying, when asked what he would have done with us, he bequeathed all these things to this Aphobus and to Demophontes, his nephews; he married my sister to Demophontes, and gave at once two talents.”[594] “In the same way,” says Demosthenes again, “Pasion dying, bequeathed his wife to Phormion.”[595] It might happen that the daughter or the wife were by law one body with the estate. Thus a daughter, in default of male heirs, belonged to the relation who would have inherited in her stead and place, if she had not lived.
If there were several relatives in the same degree of succession, the daughter was to marry the eldest of them. Further still, she was obliged in this case to quit her husband, if previously, and even with paternal authorisation, she had contracted marriage.[596] In Greece, to safeguard or conquer her independence, a woman had no other resources than the seduction of her sex and the love she could inspire. She had early recourse to these defensive weapons, for Aristotle thinks it his duty to put young men on guard against the excess of conjugal tenderness and feminine tyranny, the habit which enchains the man to his wife.[597] At length in Greece, as it had happened in Egypt, money finished by protecting the woman much more efficaciously, and even by giving her sometimes the advantage on the conjugal field of battle. Solon, who knew Egypt, began by decreeing the absolute poverty of the married woman. “The bride was to bring with her only three suits of clothes, and some household stuff of small value, for he wished marriages to be made without mercenary or venal views, and would have that union cemented by love and friendship, and not by money.”[598] But this primitive legislation could not stand against the combined action of the affection of the girl’s parents, her own desire of independence, and lastly, the cupidity of the husband, and thus the practice of the dowry became general. This dowry was constituted before marriage by a public act.[599] Securities and bonds were given to assure the dowry and the conditions of marriage. The dowry was mortgaged on the husband’s property, and returned to the wife on the dissolution of the marriage. When the woman could shelter herself behind the shield of the dowry she was much more respected, and she even sometimes tyrannised in her turn. Aristophanes, Menander, Lucian, etc., pour out endless bitter criticisms on the haughty and extravagant rich woman.
In the comedy of The Clouds the good Strepsiades cries: “I led so happily in the country a good simple life, without vexation or care, rich in bees, in sheep, and in olives! Then I married the niece of Megacles, son of Megacles. I was of the country, she of the town; she was a haughty, extravagant woman, a true Cesyra. The wedding day, when I lay down by her, I smelt the wine, the cheese, and the wool; she cares for perfumes, saffron, tender kisses, expense, good cheer, and wanton transports. I will not say that she was idle—no—she worked hard at ruining me.” According to Menander, religion served as an excuse to women for enormous expenses. Under the pretext of piety they ruined their husbands by religious sacrifices accompanied with perfumes, with golden clasps for the sandals, and female slaves ceremoniously ranged in a circle.[600]
One poor hen-pecked husband groans in these terms: “Cursed be the first man who invented marriage, and then the second, and the third, and the fourth, and all those who imitated them.” One old husband laments: “I have married a witch with a dowry. I took her, to have her fields and house, and that, O Apollo, is the worst of evils.”[601] Listen again to this one: “If being poor, you marry a rich woman, you give yourself a mistress and not a wife; you reduce yourself to be at the same time a slave and poor”—(Anaxandrides).[602]
To sum up, in ancient Greece marriage implied at first the complete slavery of the wife, who was treated as a thing; then by degrees conjugal customs were mitigated, and the wife became a person, and even a proprietor, whom her dowry or personal fortune could protect. Thenceforward money produced its usual effect on inferior characters: it debased or infatuated individuals who were without moral nobility; cupidity blinded certain men; the insolence of money intoxicated certain women. But this only occurred among the ruling classes, and the fate of husbands reduced to conjugal servitude by love of a large dowry does not concern us here.
The important feature in Greek marriage is, that the first legislators regarded it solely from the point of view of increase of population, and held individual liberty, especially that of the woman, very cheaply. Whatever we may think of this legal tyranny, it attained its end perfectly. The small republics of ancient Greece overflowed with men; thus Attica had four thousand one hundred and sixty-six inhabitants to the square league—that is to say, the population was three times more dense than that of France at present.