Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

feast, we would remind the reader of the conversation of Ischmachus in Xenophon (CEconomicus, vil, 10) with his recently wedded wife, in which he explains to her in detail the duties of a Greek housewite with an enviable naiveté. The pith of these admonitions is that the housewife should be chaste and sober-minded ; she must know how to make clothes, be experienced in the preparation of wool, and give every maidservant the task suited to her. The money and property acquired by her husband’s labour she must keep together and make an intelligent use of it. Her chief task is the nourishment and bringing up of the little children; like the queen bee, she has not only to distribute amongst the slaves, both male and female, the tasks which suit them, but also to attend to the health and welfare of the domestics. She must instruct those belonging to the family in everything worth learning and govern them wisely and uprightly. Also Plutarch’s treatise, small but well worth reading, called Gamzka Paranggelmata (“‘ Advice to the Married’), dedicated by him to a newly-wedded couple who were friends of his, contains admirable lessons that might well be taken to heart at the present day.

2. MARRIAGE CUSTOMS

Let us now accompany a Greek youth from the day of his betrothal to the nuptial chamber. ‘The Greeks were, and still are, clever calculators; the poetry of a lengthy engagement was foreign to them ; family and dowry played a larger part than the personal qualities of the bride. But it would be wrong to assume that the dowry could be by no means large enough; on the contrary, it was considered of far more importance that, if it were anyhow possible external conditions, should be in some measure equal. Hence fathers of daughters with a small dowry were by no means always happy if a rich man had become smitten with the pretty

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