The boyhood of the young Athenian was occupied by school and play; his youth was spent in gymnastic exercises, and sometimes also in scientific studies and military labours. When he attained his majority as a citizen, he acquired the right of exercising his political and civic duties, taking part in popular assemblies and other public gatherings; but apparently the young people did not make much use of these privileges when they first entered on their political majority. Besides these occupations there were many others to draw them away from serious duties: pleasant intercourse with companions, drinking bouts, and also the charms of pretty hetaerae, who were easily won to regard with favour anyone possessing a tolerably well-filled purse. And this was all the compensation they had for exclusion from the society of the daughters of citizens; for, with the exception of the hetaerae, and the flute and cithara players who performed at the banquets, women played no part in social intercourse at Athens. There were but few occasions when the girls left the close confinement of the women’s apartments for any kind of publicity, and this custom, which resembled the Oriental, and was probably introduced by the Ionic Greeks from Asia Minor, while the Doric practice was very different, caused one of the greatest wants of Attic life. This is brought forcibly before us in the comedies of the fourth century, the so-called “New Attic Comedy,” in which the basis was usually a love story, which our modern ideas would regard as purely sensual, or even immoral; while love, in the best sense of the word, is never represented. We must not, on this account, suppose that the Greeks were entirely unacquainted with that kind of affection which is based on real inclination, similarity of mind, and recognition of intellectual virtues; in fact, the contrast often emphasised by poets and artists between Aphrodite Urania, as the type of heavenly intellectual love, and Aphrodite Pandemos, as that of sensuous love, must convince us of the contrary; while Greek literature also supplies many examples of pure love in the truest sense of the word, though a strong admixture of the sensuous element was natural, even here, to a passionate southern race.

It was, however, quite unusual for such attachment to begin before marriage, since opportunities for this were wanting. But often, in spite of the conventional mode by which marriages were arranged, this attachment was developed after marriage, and we must not fall into the mistake of judging married life in Greece, or especially at Athens, only from the greatly exaggerated descriptions of Aristophanes, or the sarcastic tirades of misogynists like Euripides. The great majority of the women were not so superficial or so quarrelsome as these poets have represented them, nor the young men, as a rule, so vicious or hostile to marriage as they are depicted in the majority of the New Attic Comedies.

It is true enough, of course, that marriage was usually a matter of contract between the fathers or guardians of the young pair, and not the consequence of affection between the youth and maiden; and this it is which we see in the comedies of Plautus and Terence, who copied Greek originals. Very often the fathers agreed to a marriage between their children; sometimes the arrangements were made by a woman (p????st??a) acquainted with the circumstances of the citizens’ families, who made a kind of business of arranging marriages. An important point was equality of fortune; of course, both parties had to be full citizens, but degrees of relationship do not seem to have been any hindrance. The girl’s consent was not asked at all; it was a matter of course that she should accept the husband chosen by her parents, and, as she had no other male acquaintances, objections can very seldom have been made. Generally she was only acquainted with the husband destined for her by seeing him hastily on her walks or at festivals. The destined bridegroom is more likely to have made objections if the appointed bride did not please him; yet here, too, as a rule, the father could have his way, since his son was entirely in his power, unless it so happened that he earned his own living by any profession, which was seldom the case among the better classes. The fathers or guardians then concluded the contract of engagement, in which the bride’s dowry was fixed and special arrangements made for community of goods, return of the dowry in case of a divorce, etc. The Homeric custom, by which it was the bridegroom who brought gifts in order to win a bride, while the father gave his daughter to the one who promised the richest bridal presents, had early fallen into disuse, and probably even in the heroic period it was only customary among noble families. In the historic period a dowry was regarded as an indispensable basis for marriage: so much so that daughters or sisters of poor citizens were often endowed at the expense of generous friends, or poor orphan girls by their guardians; sometimes the State even gave a dowry to the daughters of citizens who had deserved well of their country. The engagement itself was, as a rule, a legal act, which followed the private agreement between the fathers, and was considered an essential preliminary to a legal marriage; it was not, however, a general custom to celebrate this act in a social manner by a banquet. As is usual in southern countries, the girls married very young, sometimes even at the age of fifteen, or earlier; but the period between their sixteenth and twentieth years was probably the usual one for marriage. There seems to have been no distinct limit of age for men, but probably the years between twenty and thirty were those in which most of them entered the married state. We do not know how long a period usually elapsed between the engagement and the marriage; probably there was no definite custom, but we know that very often the wedding immediately followed the engagement. We are likewise unable to say whether, in the case of a long engagement, the bride and bridegroom had any opportunities for meeting each other. The actual wedding usually took place in the winter, and a favourite time was the month Gamelion (the end of January and beginning of February), which hence received its name. Certain days regarded as auspicious were generally chosen, and the waning moon was specially avoided. It is curious, when we compare our own and the Roman customs, to note that, though the wedding received a religious character by sacrifices and other solemn ceremonies, it was not of itself regarded as a religious or legal act. The legality of the marriage depended on the engagement, and the religious consecration was not given by a priest (who took no part, as a rule, in the wedding ceremony), but by the marriage gods, who were invoked by prayer and sacrifice, more especially Zeus and Hera, Apollo, Artemis, and Peitho, the goddess of persuasion. We must now endeavour to form an idea of an Athenian wedding ceremony, as described by Greek writers.

Among the ceremonies bearing a religious character which preceded the wedding, an important part was played by the bath. Both bride and bridegroom took a bath either on the morning of the wedding-day or the day before, for which the water was brought from a river or from some spring regarded as specially sacred, as at Athens the spring Callirhoe (or Enneacrunos), at Thebes the Ismenus; and this water had to be fetched by a boy who was some near relation; sometimes, however, we hear of maidens sent to fetch it. The bride also offered libations and gifts—as, for instance, her toys, locks of hair, and the like—to one of the marriage goddesses. More important was the sacrifice generally celebrated on the wedding-day, but we know few details about the mode of its performance. It was offered to the marriage deities mentioned above, either to all collectively or singly; the families of both bridegroom and bride took part in the ceremony. We do not know of any special directions as to the animals to be sacrificed; it appears to have been the custom to remove the gall of the victim, and not burn it with the rest of the inner parts, and this was supposed to indicate symbolically that all bitterness must be absent from marriage.

Most sacrifices connected with the slaughtering of animals were followed by a festive banquet, at which the flesh of the victims constituted the principal dish, and thus the wedding sacrifice also was followed by a feast, which was generally held at the house of the bride’s father. As this must, according to custom, have taken place in the afternoon, we may assume that the other wedding ceremonies had been performed in the morning. The wedding banquet was one of the few occasions when men and women dined together; this generally occurred only in most intimate family circles, but not when guests were present. The luxury of these wedding banquets seems to have increased so much that the State was at last obliged to limit the number of guests by law. Plato would not have allowed husband and wife to invite more than five friends and five relations each—that is, twenty in all—on any occasion, whether a wedding or otherwise; and a statute of the fourth century B.C. makes thirty the maximum limit for weddings, and instructs the officials who had charge of the women (???a???????) to see that this rule is not infringed; and they seem to have carried out their office so strictly that on these occasions they often entered the house, counted the guests, and turned out all who exceeded the legal number. At the banquet, as well as at the sacrifice which preceded it, the bride appeared in all her bridal adornments. Some female relation or friend who took the part of a modern bridesmaid (??fe?t?Ía) undertook to deck the bride and anoint her with costly essences, and dress her in clothes of some fine, probably coloured, material, while special shoes, ribbons, and flowers in the hair were regarded as important, as well as the veil, which was the special mark of the bride, and covered the head, falling low down and partly covering the face. The bridegroom, too, appeared in a festive white dress, which differed from his ordinary clothing chiefly by the fineness of material; he, too, wore a wreath, as did all the other guests at the banquet; but special flowers, supposed to be of fortunate omen, were worn by the bride and bridegroom. We do not hear of any special dishes supplied at weddings, but cakes, to which the Greeks assigned a symbolical connection with festive occasions, played an important part, and in particular cakes of sesame found a place at the wedding banquet. A special custom peculiar to Athens was for a boy, both of whose parents must be alive, to go round wreathed with hawthorn or acorns carrying a basket of cakes, singing, “I fled from misfortune, I found a better lot.”

When the banquet was concluded, according to custom, by libation and prayers, and the night began to set in, the bride was conducted home to the house of the bridegroom. It was only among very poor people that the bride went on foot in this procession; if it was at all possible, she took her place between the bridegroom and the groomsman (pa????f?? or pÁ?????), who was a near relation or intimate friend of the bridegroom, in a carriage drawn by oxen or horses. All the other persons who took part in the procession—that is, all who had been at the banquet, and probably many others as well—went on foot behind the carriage to the sound of harps and flutes, while one went on in front as leader. The bride’s mother occupied the place of honour in the procession, carrying in her hand the bridal torches, kindled at the family hearth, and thus the bride took the sacred fire of her home to her new dwelling. On this account the ancients represented the god of Marriage, Hymen, with a torch as symbol. If other members of the procession also carried torches, that was only in accordance with the custom of using them when going out in the evening; it was only the torches of the bride’s mother that had any symbolical meaning. Meantime the bride’s attendants sang a bridal song, while the procession moved through the streets to the bridegroom’s house. This song is called Hymenaeus, and the following is found at the end of the Birds of Aristophanes:—

The bridegroom’s mother, also carrying torches, awaited the procession by the bridegroom’s door, which was festively decked with wreaths. A shower of all manner of sweetmeats was poured on the bridal pair, partly in jest and partly to symbolise the rich blessing invoked upon them; nor was the serious work forgotten which now awaited the young wife in her new position: a pestle for bruising the corn grains was hung up near the bridal chamber, to remind her of her duties as head of the household, and it was an ancient Athenian custom for the bride herself to carry some household implement in the procession, as, for instance, a sieve or a vessel for roasting. Another symbolical custom, supposed also to date from an ordinance of Solon, was for the bride, after her arrival in her new home, to eat a quince, which, like the pomegranate, was supposed to be a symbol of fruitfulness.

The bridegroom’s mother then attended the bridal pair to the thalamus or bridal chamber, where the richly-decked, flower-strewn marriage couch was prepared. When all the guests had gone away the bridegroom locked the door, and while the bride unveiled herself to him for the first time, the youths and maidens outside sang another song—either a few verses of the Hymenaeus or an Epithalamium, accompanied with praises of the married pair, and also doubtless by some jesting personal allusions. The Epithalamium of Helen, in Theocritus, begins thus:—

And it ends thus:—

Very often the young men, before setting out homewards, amused themselves by knocking and banging at the door of the bridal chamber, though a friend of the bridegroom’s kept watch there, ostensibly to prevent the maidens from going in to their married comrade. The last lines of the above-quoted epithalamium show that the chorus sometimes returned early next morning to greet the pair on their awakening.

On the morning after the wedding, the newly-married pair received visits and congratulations from their relations and friends. The husband presented his young wife with gifts, and so also did the visitors, but this ceremony sometimes did not take place till the second day after the wedding; for a curious custom existed (only at Athens, however) for the husband on the day after the wedding to move into his father-in-law’s house, and there spend a night apart from his wife; she then sent him a new garment, whereupon he returned to her. With the wedding presents the dowry was often presented, along with various objects belonging to the trousseau, such as jars, ointments, sandals, toilette implements, etc. The wedding festivities were then concluded by a banquet given either by the bridegroom’s father in his house or by the bridegroom himself; but it does not appear that there were any women present on this occasion. Still, this banquet was of a certain importance for the young wife; at Athens it was connected with her formal admission among the clansmen to whom the bride now belonged by her marriage. Every tribe (f???) at Athens was divided into three clans (f?Át?a?), each of these into thirty households (????); the members of the clans examined into the purity of descent of citizens, and every new-born child had to be entered in their register. This ceremony gave a sort of official, or at any rate public, legitimation to the marriage.

Among the monuments which have been preserved to us, there are several which refer to marriage; but, as a rule, they adhere to a mythological form, and do not represent a real scene from daily life. Thus, for instance, we often see the bridal pair driving in a car, but those who attend them are the Marriage gods in person, especially Apollo and Artemis, and when the presentation of marriage gifts to the newly-wedded pair is represented, it is usually the celebrated couple, Peleus and Thetis, that we see depicted, while those who offer them the gifts are gods, such as Hephaestus and the Horae, etc. The vase painting, which is here given as Fig. 78, also bears a mythological character, though it, no doubt, adheres very closely to the forms of reality. It represents the arrival of the bride at the bridegroom’s house. The latter stands leaning on a spear (which, however, must be an heroic attribute, and not customary at marriages in the historic period) before the door of his house. On the left comes the bride, who is recognised by the veil covering her head. She approaches with a hesitating step, and the bridesmaid attending her is pushing her gently forward with both hands, while the groomsman, who goes before her, holds her left hand. Apollo, with his laurel staff, and Artemis, with quiver and bow, are gazing sympathetically at the bride; in front of them a woman, either the match-maker or the bride’s mother, holds out both her arms to welcome the bridegroom.

Of course, marriage customs differed considerably in the various Greek states, as is proved by many allusions. Strangest of all seems the Laconian custom, which points clearly to marriage by capture; a custom of great antiquity, mentioned in many legends (as, for instance, that of the Dioscuri and the daughters of Leucippus). No mention is made here of a real marriage celebration; the bridegroom carried off his bride, who must, however, have previously been betrothed to him by her father, from her parents’ house, and in his own dwelling handed her over to the charge of some middle-aged woman (??fe?t?Ía), who was either a relation or an intimate friend. During his absence at the common dining table, to which all Spartan citizens and youths went every day, this woman cut off the bride’s hair, dressed her in male dress, with men’s shoes, and left her lying in the dark on some straw. Then, when the bridegroom returned, he unloosed the bride’s girdle and carried her in his arms to the bridal chamber. Curiously enough, the appearance of secrecy was kept up for some time longer; the young husband continued to live with the other young citizens, and only visited his wife occasionally in secret. Similar practices prevailed also at Crete. We do not, however, know how long these strange customs continued in the Doric states.

In considering the position of women in relation to men and in the household, we must allow for the differences between the heroic and historic periods, and also between the Doric and the Ionic-Attic states. Of the Aeolian states we know very little. In the heroic period, as far as we can gather from the Homeric poems, women occupied an important position, in many respects equal to that of the men. Heroic times, like the rest of Greek antiquity, were only acquainted with monogamy; polygamy is an entirely Oriental custom. Still, it was by no means unusual in olden times for princes and nobles to have a number of concubines, who were either slaves or female captives, besides their own lawful wives, who were sprung of noble family. In fact, the idea of conjugal fidelity held good only for the female portion of the population, while the men were absolutely free to act as they pleased. Undoubtedly there were cases in which husband and wife were so well suited together that the men resisted all temptations to infidelity; among these we may include Hector, Laertes, and Odysseus, in spite of the amours of this last with Circe and Calypso. Whenever we obtain a closer insight into the conditions of married life, as in the case of Hector and Andromache, Odysseus and Penelope, the impression received is a favourable one. There is even a vein of true affection perceptible, which is generally absent from ancient conceptions of marriage.

In the heroic age women were chiefly occupied with household management and female accomplishments, while they plied their tasks with their attendants in the women’s apartments; but their life was not one of such absolute retirement as that of the Oriental harems. On some occasions they associated with men, and took part in their sacrifices and banquets; and though they never went out unattended, yet a good deal of liberty must have been allowed the young girls, to judge from the story of Nausicaa, who went down to the sea-shore to wash the clothes.

In the historic age, the Doric states bear the closest analogy to heroic times in their marriage customs. Here, too, we find the same undisguised assumption that marriage existed for the sake of rearing children; and, in fact, the laws of Lycurgus permitted a man to transfer his conjugal rights for a time to another, if his childlessness imperilled the existence of the family. In spite—or, perhaps, on account—of this custom, infidelity was very rare at Sparta, even among the men, and the institution of hetaerae never gained ground there. Concubinage, which was very common in the heroic age, fell into disuse during historic times, but, except at Sparta, it was really discontinued only in name. The domestic relations between husband and wife more closely resembled our own at Sparta than in the Ionic-Attic states. Even at Sparta the household was the centre around which the woman’s life revolved, but she was not degraded into a mere housekeeper; a Spartan addressed his wife as “Mistress” (d?sp???a), made her the partner of his interests, and consulted her about matters of importance. This seemed so strange to the other Greek states that they were inclined to regard the Spartan husbands as henpecked, which was by no means the case; but there is no doubt that Spartan history can boast of far more remarkable women and admirable mothers than Athenian. The strong patriotism of the Spartan women which triumphed over gentler feelings is sometimes a little unattractive to our modern sentiments, but, in any case, these women command our fullest respect.

The position of women in the Ionic states bears a more Oriental character, and here it is the wife who addresses the husband as “Master.” The Athenian regarded his wife as a subordinate being, who would bear him children and keep his house in order, but was incapable of rising beyond this sphere. A woman must keep silence about all political matters, and, as a rule, she was not even acquainted with her husband’s private affairs. The husband was very seldom at home; public life, professional duties, gymnastics, social intercourse, kept him from his family during the greater part of the day; at meals they met together, except when the husband had invited guests, and then the wife had to withdraw into retirement. As a rule, husband and wife hardly knew each other before marriage; it was not till afterwards that it was possible to discover whether their characters were suited to one another, and then it often turned out that these were quite incompatible. Then they went their own ways, or else jarred and quarrelled. Sometimes a sensible man succeeded in educating and raising to his own level a really intelligent wife, to whom he could communicate his plans and interests, and thus make her his partner in the true sense of the word; but this was the exception, and, as a rule, the spheres of husband and wife remained distinct. Moreover, the ever-increasing influence of the hetaerae did much to loosen the bonds of marriage. It was a very common thing for married men to visit hetaerae or enter into love intrigues with slaves; and, as a rule, the wives shut their eyes to it, so long as some regard was shown for appearances. If a married man were to take an hetaera into his own house, that would be a ground of divorce; but unmarried men very often kept mistresses, and the relation between them sometimes closely resembled marriage. Supposing a man were to neglect his own family too much through this intercourse, or, by spending his money in this way, to inflict an injury on them, the wife, if she possessed the full rights of citizenship, had the right to enter a complaint. Improper language in the presence of women was not permitted, and no stranger was allowed to enter the women’s apartments during the absence of the husband. The children were bound to the most absolute obedience and reverence to both father and mother.

Generally speaking, the law afforded a woman but little protection from her husband; infidelity on his part did not entitle her to a divorce. On the other hand, the strictest fidelity was required from the wife; but, in spite of the seclusion in which she lived, infidelity was by no means uncommon, since there were always plenty of obliging slaves ready to help their mistress in these matters. In most Greek states the offenders were punished by the loss of certain rights, and the husband was not only justified in demanding a divorce, but even morally bound to do so if his wife’s wrong-doing had been noised abroad. The law took no steps to punish the lover; but the husband had the right to inflict corporal punishment on him, or even, if he caught him in the act, to kill him, unless, indeed, he preferred to seek compensation for his shame in a money fine. In case of divorce, too, the woman was worse off than the man. In consequence of the loose relation of the marriage-tie, it was very easy to break it. A husband could dismiss his wife or send her back to her parents, or the woman could simply leave her husband’s house, and this was usually enough to annul the marriage. In the latter case the wife was obliged to lodge a complaint against her husband in person with the archon, as there were certain legal matters connected with the divorce, chiefly concerning the dowry; as a rule, if the husband sent away his wife without sufficient reason, he had to give back the dowry to her or her legal representative (father, brother, or guardian), unless the cause of the divorce was infidelity which had been clearly proved against the wife. But though there is an appearance of justice here, in reality the man had the advantage; for it was only the most cogent reasons that would induce a woman voluntarily to leave her husband, while the man often arbitrarily put away his wife for the most trivial reasons; moreover, as a woman was always politically a minor, and if she left her husband could not go on living by herself, she was obliged to return to a state of tutelage under her father, or, if he were no longer living, her brother or legal guardian. Many a woman would rather endure the most cruel treatment from her husband than return thus to her father’s house.

The life of Athenian women was entirely devoted to domestic affairs. The part of the house set aside for the wife and children, and afterwards for the grown-up daughters and the female slaves, was generally separate from the rest of the dwelling; and a Greek writer says that, as the door which separates the women’s apartments from the rest of the house is the boundary set for a maiden, so the door which shuts the house off from the street must be the boundary for the wife. We must not, however, suppose that Greek women were entirely shut off from publicity. The wives of poorer citizens, whose circumstances were, of course, quite different from those of the upper classes, went out of doors often enough. Some were compelled to do so by their occupation, and others, who had few or no slaves at their disposal, were obliged to go out every day to purchase food and other necessaries of life.

It was very common for women to fetch water from the public wells, and to have a little chat there; but in rich houses this duty of fetching the water naturally fell to the slaves. We find allusions to these expeditions to the well in legends and in real life; and they are often represented on monuments, especially vase paintings. Fig. 79 gives an example of the kind taken from a vase painting in the antique style. On the left we see the well, surmounted by a Doric portico; the water is flowing from a lion’s mouth into a jug (?d?Ía) placed beneath it; the woman who has come to fill her vessel stands waiting beside it. On the right we see other women conversing in pairs; two have already filled their jars, and are carrying them on their heads, supported by a little cushion, according to the pretty custom which still prevails widely in the south; the vessels of the two others have not yet been filled, as we can tell from their position.

Women of the better classes only went out attended by a servant or slave, and then but seldom. A respectable woman stayed at home as much as possible; in fact, the symbol of domestic life was a tortoise, a creature which never leaves its house, and was regarded as an attribute of Aphrodite Urania. In consequence, the women liked to linger by the windows of the upper storey, the one generally used for their apartments, in order to look down on the street, which afforded many women the only entertainment and change they had in the day’s occupations. There were no common meetings for them as there were for men. They visited one another occasionally, and there were a few festivals in the year to which they went without the men, and then the proceedings seem to have been very lively, as for instance, at the Thesmophoria. The women drove in their finest clothes to the Eleusinian celebrations, and they also took part in the Panathenaea, on which occasion the daughters of the resident foreigners (?t?????) carried their chairs and sunshades behind them. In general, it appears as though more liberty had been gradually granted women in the matter of appearance in public, though this liberty did not extend in Greece as far as at Alexandria in the time of the Ptolemies, when Theocritus, in one of his idylls, represents two citizens’ wives, attended by their servants, penetrating into the densest crowd on the occasion of the Festival of Adonis. The manifold contradictions which we find in the ancient writers regarding the public appearance of women which have called forth so many various opinions among the learned of the present day, must be attributed in part to differences of period and, in part, to differences of locality.

Notwithstanding this, everywhere and always in antiquity a woman’s sphere was supposed to be the household, and when the family and the number of slaves was large, this charge required a good deal of strength and attention. Not only had all the food to be prepared for the household, but also the clothing had to be provided for all its members; for it was very unusual for any woman, who had numerous slaves at her disposal, to purchase stuffs or clothes ready-made. They therefore spent a great part of the day with their daughters and maids in a specially appointed part of the house, where the looms were set up. Here, in the first place, the wool, which was bought in a rough condition, was prepared for working, by washing and beating, then fulled and carded, disagreeable occupations which, on account of the exertion required, were usually left to the maids. The wool thus prepared for working was then put in large work-or spinning-baskets (?Á?a??? or tÁ?a???),

Fig. 80.