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

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

in a general picture, which might contain everything of importance, all the scattered passages in different authors in which marriage and the wife are spoken of. The results so obtained may now be further supplemented by various details and greater light thrown upon them by anecdotes, bons mots, and the like. A collection of such had already been made in ancient times, and much of it has come down to us. Thus, in the philosophical writings of Plutarch problems concerning marriage are frequently examined. An inexhaustible mine of information about antiquity is the Banquet of the Learned in 15 books by Athenaeus of Naucratis in Egypt, who lived in the time of Marcus Aurelius. The dinner took place in the house of Larensius, a distinguished and highly educated Roman ; twenty-nine* guests from all branches of learning were invited—philosophers, rhetoricians, poets, musicians, physicians, and jurists, amongst them Athenzus, who in the work (completely preserved except for the beginning and end) recounts to his friend Timocrates everything that was discussed at the banquet. At the beginning of the 13th book the conversation turns upon marriage and married women: “In Sparta it was customary to shut all marriageable girls in a dark room and the unmarried young men with them; every young man carried off without a dowry any girl he caught hold of.” According to Clearchus of Soli, on a certain festival, the women drag the unmarried men round the altar and beat them with rods, in order that, to avoid such disgrace, they may turn to love and approach marriage in due time. In Athens Cecrops first introduced the practice of monogamy, whereas hitherto sexual intercourse was unrestrained and marriages in common prevailed. According to a widespread opinion, which was said to go back to Aristotle, Socrates also had two lawful wives, Xanthippe and a certain Myrto, a great-granddaughter of the well-known Aristeides. At that

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