It held a central place in life thoroughly European, as opposed to the Oriental ideas. Nay, it approximated very much to the ideas prevailing in our own country as well as age. We do not find in the poems any instance of a marriage enforced against the will of a young maiden, or contracted when she was of years too tender to exercise a judgment. Nausicaa fears that if she is seen with Ulysses, censorious tongues will immediately put it about that she is going to be married to him. They will say, ‘Who is this tall and handsome stranger with Nausicaa?’[909] Surely she is going to become his bride. Truly she has picked up some gallant from afar, who has strayed from his ship: or some god has come down to wed her. Better it were if she found a husband from abroad, since, forsooth, she looks down upon her Phæacian suitors, though they are many and noble. Then continues this model of maidens; ‘Thus I shall come into disgrace; and indeed I myself should be indignant with any one who should so act, and who, against the will of her parents, frequented the company of men before being publicly married.’ In this remarkable passage we have such an exhibition of woman’s freedom, as scarcely any age has exceeded. For it clearly shows that the marriage of a damsel was her own affair, and that, subject to a due regard freely rendered to authority and opinion, she had, when of due age, a main share in determining it. That is to say, to the extent of choosing a mate among the competitors. The expression of giving away or promising a daughter, by parents, is often used[910], but we perceive the limits of its meaning from the passage just quoted. The more so, because similar expressions as to the proceedings of parents are applied in Homer to the marriages of sons[911]. I do not suppose it would have been open to any maiden to remain single. That all should marry, that there should be no class living in celibacy, was a kind of law for society in its infant state, even as now it may be said to be almost a law for the most numerous classes of society. Above all I suppose it to be clear that a marriageable widow could not ordinarily remain in widowhood. No reproach arises to Helen, on account of the renewal of her irregular union with Deiphobus; and when Penelope, or others in her behalf, contemplate the death of Ulysses, and her consequent release from the marriage state, that change is always treated as the immediate preface to another crisis, namely, the choice of a second husband.
Although social intercourse with man might not, as Nausicaa says, be sought by damsels, it might innocently come on occasions such as those afforded by public festivities, or by an ordinary calling[912].
Freedom of the woman.
But again, the persecution of Penelope by the Suitors bears emphatic testimony to the freedom of woman within the limits I have described. The utmost of their aim is to coerce her into marrying some one; even as their sin lies in bringing this pressure to bear upon her before the death of Ulysses has been ascertained. On the other hand, the pressure is a moral one: her violent removal is never thought of; and the absolute silence of the poem on the subject proves that it would have been at variance with the prevailing manners, had any cabal been formed, in order even to constrain her choice towards a particular person. The very presents, by which the profligate Suitors endeavoured to ingratiate themselves with the women of the household of Ulysses, speak favourably of the free condition of the sex, and seem to show, that it descended even into lower stations.
For the Greek in the heroic age, marriage was the pivot of life. It took place in the bloom of age: hence[913] the beautiful expression, θαλερὸς γάμος, Od. vi. 66, xx. 74. It even marks of itself the age of persons; Alcinous has five sons, three ἠΐθεοι, and two ὀπυίοντες, (Od. vi. 63): three youths or bachelors, and two married.
Presents were usually brought by the bridegroom, and dowries sometimes given with the bride. Where the two concurred, the presents may have been either in the nature of compliments, or intended to meet the expense of the wedding festivities. The absence of the former, and the occurrence of the latter, seem each to be more or less in the nature of an exception. With a wife returning to her parents, the dowry returned also[914]. On the other hand, to judge from the story of Vulcan and Venus, wherever adultery was committed, the guilty man was bound to pay a fine[915]. The poems give us several instances where personal gifts and energy served instead of wealth, as recommendations in suing for a wife[916]. The drawing of the Bow affords a conspicuous example of the prevailing ideas.
Upon the whole, then, in all that related to forming engagements by marriage, there seems to have been preserved a large regard to the freedom and dignity of woman[917]. War was doubtless in this respect her great enemy; she then became the prey of the strongest, and it is probable that this may have been the most powerful instrument in promoting the extensive introduction of concubinage into Greece.
With respect to the ceremonial of marriage, and the nature of its formal engagement, the Homeric poems furnish us with scanty evidence. There is no mention, in fact, of any promise or vow attending it. The expression δαινύναι γάμον, in Od. iv. 3, seems to contain all that would be included by us when we speak of celebrating marriage. Not that it was the mere banquet that created the conjugal relation: it was doubtless the ἀμφάδιος γάμος, the solemn public acknowledgment, to which relatives and friends, and, in such a case as that of Hermione, the public or people of the state, thus became witnesses. This subject will be further considered in connection with the case of Briseis.
Perpetuity of the tie of marriage.
3. If the mode of entry into the obligations of married life was as simple and indeterminate as we have supposed, such a want of formalities greatly enhances the strength of the testimony borne by the facts of the heroic age to what may be called the natural perpetuity of the marriage contract.