3. That the contract, once made, should not be dissolved.
And closely allied to these there is yet a fourth negative:
4. That nuptials should not be contracted between persons who stand within certain near degrees of relationship.
5. It is always requisite that this engagement should exclude not only the possibility of marriage for either partner with a third person, but also any other fleshly connection without marriage.
Of these propositions, the first, third, and fourth, are heads of restraint on marriage. Every one of the three was acknowledged by the Greeks of the heroic age.
Marriage always single.
The rule of conjugal fidelity was admitted, though not wholly without relaxation, to be as applicable to men as to their wives. This, and all the other restrictions, were applied to women with undeviating strictness.
1. As regards the first, it is plain, from a mass of evidence so large as to amount, in spite of its being negative, to demonstration, that the uniform practice of the Greeks required the marriage union to be single. This, however, of itself, is saying little; but it imports much besides what is on the surface: it implies, that, with due allowances, the spirit of the marriage contract is a spirit of equity and of well adjusted rights, as between those who enter into it.
2. This relation was also conceived by the Greeks in a spirit of freedom.