Among the Azteks, no young man lived single till his twenty-second year, unless he intended to become a priest, and for girls the customary marrying-age was from eleven to eighteen. In Tlascala, according to Clavigero, the unmarried state was, indeed, so despised that a full-grown man who would not marry had his hair cut off for shame.[808] Again, among the ancient Peruvians, every year, or every two years, each governor in his district had to arrange for the marriage of all the young men at the age of twenty-four and upwards, and all the girls from eighteen to twenty.[809]
In Japan, as I am told by a Japanese friend, old maids and old bachelors are almost entirely unknown, and the same is the case in China.[810] “Almost all Chinese,” says Dr. Gray, “robust or infirm, well-formed or deformed, are called upon by their parents to marry so soon as they have attained the age of puberty. Were a grown-up son or daughter to die unmarried, the parents would regard it as most deplorable.” Hence a young man of marriageable age, whom consumption or any other lingering disease had marked for its own, would be called upon by his parents or guardians to marry at once.[811] Nay, so indispensable is marriage considered among this people, that even the dead are married. Thus the spirits of all males who die in infancy, or in boyhood, are in due time married to the spirits of females who have been cut off at a like early age.[812]
Marco Polo states the prevalence of the same practice among the Tartars.[813] In Corea, says the Rev. John Ross, “the male human being who is unmarried is never called a ‘man,’ whatever his age, but goes by the name of ‘yatow;’ a name given by the Chinese to unmarriageable young girls: and the ‘man’ of thirteen or fourteen has a perfect right to strike, abuse, order about the ‘yatow’ of thirty, who dares not as much as open his lips to complain.”[814]
Mohammedan peoples generally consider marriage a duty both for men and women.[815] “Nothing,” says Carsten Niebuhr, “is more rarely to be met with in the East, than a woman unmarried after a certain time of life.” She will rather marry a poor man, or become second wife to a man already married, than remain in a state of celibacy.[816] Among the Persians, for instance, almost every girl of good repute is married before her twenty-first year, and old bachelors are unknown.[817] In Egypt, according to Mr. Lane, it is improper and even disreputable to abstain from marrying when a man has attained a sufficient age, and when there is no just impediment.[818]
Among the Hebrews, celibacy was nearly unheard of, as it is among the Jews of our day. They have a proverb that “he who has no wife is no man.”[819] “To an ancient Israelite,” Michaelis remarks, “it would indeed have appeared very strange to have seen, though but in a vision, a period in the future history of the world, when it would be counted sanctity and religion to live unmarried.”[820] Marriage was by the Hebrews looked upon as a religious duty. According to the Talmud, the authorities can compel a man to marry, and he who lives single at the age of twenty is accursed by God almost as if he were a murderer.[821]
The ancient nations of the Aryan stock, as M. Fustel de Coulanges and others have pointed out, regarded celibacy as an impiety and a misfortune: “an impiety, because one who did not marry put the happiness of the Manes of the family in peril; a misfortune, because he himself would receive no worship after his death.” A man’s happiness in the next world depended upon his having a continuous line of male descendants, whose duty it would be to make the periodical offerings for the repose of his soul.[822]
Thus, according to the ‘Laws of Manu,’ marriage is the twelfth Sanskāra, and hence a religious duty incumbent upon all.[823] “Until he finds a wife, a man is only half of a whole,” we read in the ‘Brahmadharma’;[824] and, among the Hindus of the present day, a man who is not married is considered to be almost a useless member of society, and is, indeed, looked upon as beyond the pale of nature. It is also an established national rule, that women are designed for no other end than to be subservient to the wants and pleasures of men; consequently, all women without exception are obliged to marry, when husbands can be found for them, and those who cannot find a husband commonly fall into the state of concubinage.[825] Among the ancient Iranians, too, it was considered a matter of course that a girl should be married on reaching the years of puberty.[826]
The ancient Greeks regarded marriage as a matter not merely of private, but also of public interest. This was particularly the case at Sparta, where criminal proceedings might be taken against those who married too late, and against those who did not marry at all. In Solon’s legislation marriage was also placed under the inspection of the State, and, at Athens, persons who did not marry might be prosecuted, although the law seems to have grown obsolete in later times. But independently of public considerations, there were private reasons which made marriage an obligation.[827] Plato remarks that every individual is bound to provide for a continuance of representatives to succeed himself as ministers of the Divinity;[828] and Isaeus says, “All they who think their end approaching, look forward with a prudent care that their houses may not become desolate, but that there may be some person to attend to their funeral rites, and to perform the legal ceremonies at their tombs.”[829]
To the Roman citizen, as Mommsen observes, a house of his own and the blessing of children appeared the end and essence of life;[830] and Cicero’s treatise ‘De Legibus’—a treatise which generally reproduces, in a philosophic form, the ancient laws of Rome—contains a law, according to which the Censors had to impose a tax upon unmarried men.[831] But in later periods, when sexual morality reached a very low ebb in Rome, celibacy—as to which grave complaints were made as early as 520 B.C.—naturally increased in proportion, especially among the well-off classes. Among these, marriage came to be regarded as a burden which people took upon themselves at the best in the public interest. Indeed, how it fared with marriage and the rearing of children, is shown by the Gracchan agrarian laws, which first placed a premium thereon;[832] whilst, later on, the Lex Julia et Papia Poppæa imposed various penalties on those who lived in a state of celibacy after a certain age,[833]—but with little or no result.[834]
Again, the Germans, as described by Cæsar, accounted it in the highest degree scandalous to have intercourse with the other sex before the twentieth year.[835] Tacitus also asserts that the young men married late, and the maidens did not hurry into marriage.[836] But it seems probable that at a later age celibacy was almost unknown among the Germans, except in the case of women who had once lost their reputation, for whom neither beauty, youth, nor riches could procure a husband.[837] As for the Slavs, it should be observed that, among the Russian peasantry celibacy is even now unheard of.[838] When a youth reaches the age of eighteen, he is informed by his parents that he ought to marry at once.[839]