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

MARRIAGE CUSTOMS

and offered to the guests, crying out at the same time: “I have avoided the bad, and found what is better ”’ (Epuyov KaKOV, 1Dpov ayewvov),

After the meal, at which naturally toasts were drunk and healths proposed (Sappho, frag., 51 (PLG), the bride was driven in a carriage drawn by oxen, mules or horses to the bridegroom’s house. She sat in the middle between the bridegroom and his parochos (dpoxos) (Photius, Lexikon, 52; Pollux, ui, 40), his best friend or nearest relative. The custom of putting oxen to the carriage was explained by a myth, which is thus related by Pausanias (ix, 3): “ Once Hera quarrelled with Zeus, and in her anger betook herself to Euboea: not knowing what to do, since he was unable to make it up with her, Zeus asked Cithzron, the ruler of Platzea at the time, who was famous for his wisdom, for his advice. He told Zeus to make a wooden image of a woman, to drive it round covered with a wrapper on a cart drawn by a team of oxen and to say that he is taking home his young bride, Plateza. Zeus did so. Hera, stung with jealousy, hurried up, but when, after the veil had been lifted and she saw that it was no young woman of flesh and blood but only a wooden image, she rejoiced greatly and was reconciled to Zeus.”

The axle of the carriage was sometimes burnt (e.g. in Boeotia) after the arrival at the bridegroom’s house. ‘This was said to be an omen (Plutarch, Quaest. Roman., 29) that the young wife might never have the wish to leave her husband’s house again.

In case a widower married again, he took no part himself in the marriage procession, but waited at home for the bride, who was brought to him by a friend, now called not parochos, but nymphagogus (Pollux, iii, 40).

Wedding torches were indispensable in the procession ; they were lighted by the mothers of the bride and bridegroom and carried by those who accompanied the procession on foot (Eurip.,

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