What's What in America

by Eugene V. Brewster

Wedlock, indeed, hath oft compared been

To public feasts, where meet a public rout,

Where they that are without would fain go in,

And they that are within would fain go out.

Sir John Davies.

Let us listen, for a moment, to the merry jingle of the wedding bells, as they echo through the corridors of the Hall of Time. What is a wedding, and a marriage, and why? What object was sought, in the beginning, when custom demanded a marriage ceremony before cohabitation? Why has that ancient custom followed man to every far corner of the globe, and why do all peoples resent any effort to destroy that custom? Why so many different forms of ceremony, what do they mean, and why do they differ so?

Bolingbroke says that marriage was instituted because it was necessary that parents should know their own respective offspring; and that, as the mother can have no doubt that she is the mother, so a man should have all the assurance possible that he is the father: hence the marriage contract, and the various moral and civil rights, duties and obligations which follow as corollaries.

Monogamy was the original law of marriage, but in Genesis we are told that Lamech took unto himself two wives. The Jews, in common with other Oriental peoples, married when they were very young, but the Talmudists forbade marriage by a male under thirteen years and a day. There was not much ceremony, in the early days, except the removal of the bride from her father's house to that of the bridegroom, called "taking a wife," and in primitive ages this was done by seizure and force. The only "ceremony" took place on the preceding day, when the marriage had been agreed upon in advance, and consisted of a formal elaborate bath by the bride in the presence of her female companions. In later times, marriage ceremonies gradually became very elaborate, and have generally remained so and became more so ever since, in all parts of the world. Abraham appears to have the honor of having secured the first divorce in history, for we are told he sent Hagar and her child away from him. In Deuteronomy XXIV, it is stated that a man had the power to dispose of a faithless wife by writing her bill of divorcement, giving it into her hand and sending her out of his house. When a man died, without issue, his brother had first claim upon the widow, and she could not marry another till the brother had formally rejected her. One peculiarity of the ancients was, that they assumed that the impending wedding of a couple had a very depressing effect, and it was consequently the custom for all friends and neighbors to take means to cheer up the doomed ones by all sorts of boisterous amusements. Married life was looked upon as a business, and perhaps a perilous one.

Cecrops seems to have been the first to introduce among the Athenians the formal marriage ceremony with all its solemn and binding obligations. The ancient Greeks early decided that marriage was a private as well as a public necessity, and the Spartans treated celibacy as a crime. Lycurgus made laws so that those who married too late, or unsuitably, or not at all, could be treated like ordinary criminals, and not only was it unrespectable to be a bachelor, but it was dangerous. Plato preached that a man should consider the welfare of his country rather than his own pleasure, and that if he did not marry before he was thirty-five he should be punished severely. The Spartans advocated marriage for the reason that they wanted more children born to the state, and when a married woman gave birth to no children she was made to cohabit with another man. The Spartan King, Archidamus, fell in love with and married a very little woman, which so incensed the people that they fined him: they did not believe in marriage for love, but in marriage for big, sturdy offspring. Often, fathers would choose brides for their sons, and husbands for their daughters, who had never seen each other, and compel them to marry. In Greece, until Aristotle put a stop to it, the custom of buying wives was common.

By the Romans, as well as by the Jews and Greeks, marriage was deemed an imperative duty; and parents were reprehended if they did not obtain husbands for their daughters by the time they were twenty-five. The Roman law recognized monogamy only, and polygamy was prohibited in the whole empire. Hence, the former became practically the rule in all Christiandom, and was introduced into the canon law of the Eastern and Western churches. During the time of Augustus, bachelorhood became fashionable, and to check the evil, as well as to lessen the alarming number of divorces, which were also getting fashionable, Augustus imposed a wife tax on all who persisted in the luxury of celibacy.