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

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

this love-match ; so I send to the prize-winners my liquid nectar, the gift of the Muses, the sweet fruit of my fancy, and pour a libation in honour of the victors at Olympia and Pytho (Delphi) ”.

However, this family feast does not appear to have been the custom throughout Greece.

We are several times informed that winter was considered the most suitable season for marriage, without any reasons being given ; indeed, the first month took its name Gamelion from gamos (wedding); pious superstition appears to have prevented the time of the waning moon being chosen for the conclusion of a marriage.

Customs of various kinds were usual before the act of marriage proper, above all, of course, sacrifices to the divinities who protected marriage, consequently in particular to Hera and Zeus; that the gall of the sacrificial victim might not be used is a symbol easy to understand, for the marriage must be free from “‘ gall and anger’ (Plutarch, Precepta conjugalia, 27). Also Athene, Artemis, and other divinities were sometimes thought of by those who were going to marry; as a rule sacrifice was only offered to Aphrodite on the wedding-day, and in the little town of Thespie (Plutarch, Amatorius, 26) in Boeotia the beautiful custom existed that the newly wedded repaired to the temple of Eros, to entreat happiness and blessing for the marriage before the glorious statue of Eros by Praxiteles. In many places it was usual for the bride to offer some locks of her hair or her girdle or both (Pausanias, ii, 33, 1; Eurip., Hippol., 1416, and elsewhere) on the altar, in which the offering of the hair symbolized the taking leave of youth, of the girdle the resignation of virginity.

The sacrifice was followed or preceded by the bath of the bride, the water for which was fetched by a boy of the neighbourhood from a spring or river which has special importance for the place in question, as in Athens the fountain of Kallirrhoe

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