At daybreak on the following morning their friends re-assembled and saluted them with a new epithalamium, exhorting them to descend from their bower to enjoy the beauties of the dawn,[[90]] which in that warm and genial climate are even in January equal to those of a May morning with us. On appearing in the presence of their congratulators, the wife, as a mark of affection, presented her husband with a rich woollen cloak,[[91]] in part, at least, the production of her own fair hands. On the same occasion the father of the bride sent a number of costly gifts to the house of his son-in-law, consisting of cups, goblets, or vases of alabaster or gold, beds, couches, candelabra, or boxes for perfumes or cosmetics, combs, jewel-cases, costly sandals, or other articles of use or luxury. And, that so striking an instance of his wealth and generosity might not escape public observation, the whole was conveyed to the bridegroom’s house in great pomp by female slaves, before whom marched a boy clothed in white, and bearing a torch in his hand, accompanied by a youthful basket-bearer habited like a canephora in the sacred processions.[[92]] Customs in spirit exactly similar still survive among the primitive mountaineers of Wales, where the newly-married couple, in the middle and lower ranks of life, have their houses completely furnished by the free-will offerings, not only of their parents but of their friends. It is, however, incumbent on the recipients to make proof in their turn of equal generosity when any member of the donor’s family ventures on the hazards of housekeeping.
[1]. Προμνηστρία. Aristoph. Nub. 41. et Schol. Poll. iii. 41.
[2]. Athen. xiii. 2. Mr. Mitford defers too much to “the traditions received in the polished ages” when, upon the authority of such traditions and of such writers as Justin (ii. 6.), he appears to conclude that, before the time of Cecrops, the people of Attica were in knowledge and civilisation inferior to the wildest savages. Hist, of Greece, i. 58. Upon legends and authors of this description no reliance can be placed. If society existed, everything “indispensable” to society also existed; therefore, if marriage be so, it could not be unknown. Besides, how happens it that this same Cecrops who instituted marriage did not likewise teach them to sow corn, which, if Egypt was, when he left it, a civilised country, must have been as familiar to him as matrimony? This most necessary acquisition, however, they were left to make many ages afterwards, during the reign of Erechtheus. Justin, ii. 6.
[3]. Cf. Goguet, Origine des Lois. iv. 394, where the learned author contends most chivalrously for the received theory. Apollodorus, however, represents Cecrops as an Autochthon, συμφύες ἔχων σῶμα ἀνδρὸς καὶ δράκοντος. iii. 14. 1.—The reason why he was thus said to partake of two natures—half-man and half-snake—has been very variously and very fantastically explained. Diodorus Siculus, (i. p. 17,) derives his title to be considered half a man and half a beast, from his being, by choice a Greek, by nature a barbarian. Yet he conceives that it was the beast that civilised the man. Others explain διφυὴς somewhat differently to mean that he was of gigantic stature and understood two languages: διὰ μῆκος σώματος οὑτω καλούμενος, ὅς φήσιν ὁ Φιλόχορος, ἢ ὅτι Αἰγυπτίων τὰς δύο γλώσσας ἠπίστατο.—Euseb. No. 460.—Eustathius, familiar with the fables of the mythology, turns the tables upon Cecrops, and conceives that he may have civilised himself, not the Athenians, by settling in Attica. He supposes him ἀπὸ ὄφεως εἰς ἀνθρωπὸν ἐλθειν, ἐπειδὴ ἐκεῖνος ἐλθὼν εἰς Ἑλλάδα καὶ τὸν βάρβαρον Αἰγυπτιασμὸν ἀφεις, χρηστοὺς ἀναλάβετο τρόπους πολιτικοὺς.—In Dionys. Peneg. p. 56.
[4]. Deipnosoph. xiii. 2.—Compare the account in Diogenes Laertius, ii. 5. 10.—The conduct of Socrates, who married Xantippe to prove the goodness of his temper, was imitated, we are told, by a Christian lady, who “desired of St. Athanasius to procure for her, out of the widows fed from the ecclesiastical corban, an old woman morose, peevish, and impatient, that she might by the society of so ungentle a person have often occasion to exercise her patience, her forgiveness, and charity.”—Jeremy Taylor’s Life of Christ, i. 384.
[5]. Athen. xiii. 5.
[6]. Dinarch. in Demosth. § 11. Cf. Poll. viii. 40. Comm. p. 644.
[7]. Aristoph. Lysistrat. 78, seq.
[8]. Athen. xiii. 2.