Ordinary individuals, however, were restrained from the commission of such immoralities by the laws, more particularly at Athens, where marriage was contemplated with all the reverence due to the great palladium of civilisation. As a necessary consequence, celibacy could be no other than disreputable, so that, to a man ambitious of public honour, the possession of a wife and children was no less indispensable than the means of living.[[6]] Among the Spartans, bachelors were delivered over to the tender mercies of the women, and subjected to very heavy penalties. During the celebration of certain festivals they were seized by a crowd of petulant viragoes, each able to strangle an ox,[[7]] and dragged in derision round the altars of the gods, receiving from the fists of their gentle tormentors such blows as the regular practice of boxing had taught the young ladies to inflict.[[8]]
“And ladies sometimes hit exceeding hard.”
But we shall be the less inclined to judge uncharitably of this somewhat unfeminine custom, if we consider that, in the ancient world, no less than in the modern, unmarried and childless women were held but in slight esteem. And this feeling, which never for a moment slumbers in society, teaches better than the cant of a thousand sentimentalists what the true origin of love is.
Of the impediments to marriage arising, among ancient nations, from relationship or consanguinity, very little is with certainty known. In the heroic ages, all unions excepting those of parents with their children appear to have been lawful; for, in the Odyssey, we find the six sons of Æolos joined in marriage with their six sisters, the manners of the olden times, abandoned on earth, still lingering among the gods.
Iphidamos has to wife his mother’s sister,[[9]] and Alcinoös, by no means a profligate or immoral prince, is united with his brother’s daughter;[[10]] Deiphobos, after Paris’s death, takes possession of Helen,[[11]] and Helenos, the seer, is united in wedlock with Andromache, the widow of his brother Hector.[[12]] But without alleging any further examples, we may, from the practice imputed to the gods, among whom scarcely any degree of relationship was a bar to marriage, infer that, in very early ages, few scruples were entertained upon the subject. Later mythologists have even imputed to Zeus an illicit amour with his daughter Aphrodite,[[13]] but libellously, and in contradiction to the best ancient authorities.[[14]] Nature, indeed, has so peremptorily prohibited the union of parents with their own children, that positive laws forbidding connexions so nefarious, have in all ages been nearly unnecessary, though the superstition of the Magi[[15]] in ancient, and the profligacy of popes and princes in modern times, have been accused of transgressing these natural boundaries.
Could we credit the sophist of Naucratis, there was likewise one distinguished person[[16]] among the Athenians who coveted the reputation of equal guilt.
The marriage of brothers with their own sisters was, in later ages, considered illegal; not so with respect to half sisters by the fathers’s side, whom no law forbade men to marry.[[17]] Still the recorded examples of those who availed themselves of this privilege are few; but among them we find the great Cimon, son of Miltiades, who, from affection, observes Cornelius Nepos, and in perfect conformity with the manners of his country, took to wife his sister Elpinice.[[18]] Plutarch, too, speaks of the union as public and legal, but Athenæus[[19]] characteristically insinuates that Elpinice was merely her brother’s mistress. The Spartan law took a different view of what constitutes sisterhood. Here the father was everything, and therefore with an uterine sister, as no near relation, marriage might be contracted.[[20]] All connexions in the direct line of ascent or descent were prohibited; but the prohibition extended not to the collateral branches,[[21]] uncles being permitted to take to wife their nieces, and nephews their aunts.
The precise age at which an Athenian citizen might legally take upon him the burden of a family, is said, without proof, though not altogether without probability, to have been determined by Solon; for such matters were in those ages supposed to come within the legitimate scope of legislation.[[22]] They attributed to the season of youth a much greater duration than comports with our notions. It was, in fact, thought to extend to the age of thirty-five or thirty-seven, more or less: when entering upon the less flowery domain of manhood, men would need the aid and consolation of a helpmate. But if there ever existed such a law it was often broken,[[23]] for early marriages, though less common perhaps than in modern times, are constantly alluded to both by historians and poets. Apprehensions of the too great increase of population already led philosophers, even in those early ages, vainly to apply themselves to the discovery of checks, which the irresistible impulses of nature always render nugatory; and viewing in that light the regulation attributed to Solon,[[24]] they, with some variation, adopt it in their political works. Plato,[[25]] in accordance with Hesiod’s notion, fixes for the male, the marriageable age at thirty; but Aristotle, who chose on most points to differ from his master, allows his citizens seven years more of liberty. For women the proper age, he thought, is about eighteen. His reasons are, that the husband and wife will thus flourish and decay together; and, their offspring inheriting the bloom and highest vigour of their parents, be at once[[26]] healthy in body and energetic in mind.
Winter, more particularly the month of January, thence called Gamelion, or the “Nuptial Month,” was regarded as the fittest season[[27]] of the year for the celebration of marriage; and if the north wind happened to blow, as at that time of the year it often does, the circumstance was supposed to be peculiarly auspicious. For this notion several physiological reasons are assigned; as that, during the prevalence of that wind, the human frame is peculiarly nervous and full of energy; that the spirits are consequently light, and the temper and disposition sweet, cheerful, and flexible. Lingering sparks of ancient superstition may also have had their share in establishing this persuasion: towards that quarter of the heavens, as towards an universal Kebleh, all the civilised nations of antiquity turned as the home of their gods; in that direction point all the openings of the Egyptian pyramids; thither to the present moment turn the Chinese and Brahmins when they pray, and in the holy tabernacle of the Jews the Table of Shewbread[[28]] likewise faced the north. Attention, too, was paid to the lunar influences; for, no other circumstance preventing it, it was usual to fix on the full of the moon, when the festival denominated Theogamia, or “Nuptials of the Gods” was celebrated, in order that religion itself, by its august and venerable ceremonies, might appear to sanctify the union of mortals effected under its auspices.
To this practice there are several allusions in ancient writers. Agamemnon, in Euripides, when questioned by his wife respecting the time of Iphigenia’s marriage, replies, that it shall take place