The marriage tradition in ancient Greece varied from city-state to city-state, and most documents (including documents and materials) were about the upper class. In high society, marriage is regarded as a way for the bride's father to increase family wealth and social status, and love is rarely a factor. Women usually get married in their teens-though not in Sparta-while men get married in their twenties. In Athens, most of the written materials came from Athens, partly because they expected to complete their compulsory military service ahead of schedule. Throughout the ancient Greek world, a basic element of premarital arrangements was that the bride's father arranged a dowry in the form of money, land or anything of value as part of the marriage agreement.
Get married in Athens
The most common wedding ceremony in ancient Greek literature is the Athenian tradition. In the Greek tragedy Iphigenia of Eris, euripides, an Athenian playwright in the 5th century BC, described the wedding preparations for the doomed marriage between Iphigenia and Achilles (or proaulia):
Collect sacrificial baskets and put garlands on your head. You, Menelaus, get everything ready for this happy moment. Let's listen to the flute singing and the dancers tapping the earth with their feet. (lines 432-436)
For Athenian girls, marriage marks the transition from childhood to adulthood.
Sacrifice is an important part of proaulia, as is the music accompanying the motorcade to the groom's house on the wedding day. The most common sacrifice is Hera, because she is the sacred model of the bride, and themis, the goddess of chastity. The bride will sacrifice animals and food, but most notably, she will sacrifice childhood clothes and toys, because marriage marks the transition from childhood to adulthood. In the 4th century BC, the inscription on the chastity regulations from Cyrene talked about that a woman had to make a premarital sacrifice to Al themis, as if this was the price she had to pay for losing her virginity.
On the wedding day (gamos), the bride mainly moves from her father's house to her husband's house. At the beginning of this day, sacrifices should be made to the gods to ensure that the marriage is blessed and the bride bathes, which is a symbol of purity. The bride and groom sacrificed in the temple together, and then went to the bride's father's house to attend the wedding. However, the most important part of gamos happens at night. The groom will drive the bride home along the torch-lit road, and then their family and friends will bring gifts and play Greek music. When they arrive at the groom's house, the couple will take a bath with dried fruit, which is a symbol of fertility. Then the husband will take his new wife to the bedroom, where her veil will be taken off in a ceremony.
On the second day after the wedding, relatives and friends will come to the newly married couple's home and give gifts such as furniture, flower pots and jewelry. Many of them are decorated with family scenes, especially depicting the family roles that wives should perform now. This day is called epaulia.
Get married in Sparta
Compared with the wedding in Athens, the wedding in Sparta is certainly not a big event involving family and friends. Traditions that do exist are designed to be secret and carried out at night with disguised wives. Female 18-20 years old, male marriage is generally around 25 years old. According to Plutarch, in his Biography of Lekugus, when preparing for the wedding ceremony, the bride will "cut off her hair near her head" and "put on a man's cloak and sandals" (Volume 15, Section 3). Then she was left in a dark room, and the groom would catch her in a ritual way. After that, husbands should visit their newlyweds in secret at night.
Like the wedding tradition, the married life of a Spartan wife is quite different from that of an Athenian wife. In Sparta, men spend most of their time in the war or with their comrades-in-arms (under the threat of social exclusion), and are not allowed to live with their wives before the age of 30. Therefore, the wife will become the head of the family, taking on the responsibility of managing land and Helot (semi-slavery agriculture). The state gives it to the husband. Such freedom and responsibility were not given to the wife of Athens, and her life was confined to confinement. Although they play an important role in the daily management of the family, mainly raising children and making clothes, they are by no means the heads of the family. In most cases, they are forbidden to leave home without company. Although it is rarely similar to Athens, in Sparta, fertility is regarded as the most important role of women. Lycurgus, the legendary Spartan law, has made many laws for women, aiming at ensuring that women can have healthy children. One of the laws is to let women take part in physical exercise to make them stronger during childbirth.
family life
The head of the family even has the right to reject any child he doesn't want to stay at the birth.
In ancient Greece, it was most important to get married and raise children, especially men. Demosthenes, an Athenian politician in the 4th century BC, described the role of wives in the family very straightforwardly in a statement, saying that their job was to "give birth to legal children for us and become faithful guardians of our family" (against Niera, 59, 122). It is regarded as a wife's responsibility to serve her husband and ensure the maintenance of his property and the continuation of his blood. In the Athenian family, the father is kyrios, who has legal responsibility and control over his wife, children and unmarried female relatives. For these women, he will be responsible for arranging marriages and providing dowry. He even has the right to reject any child he doesn't want to stay at birth.
An Athenian wife is confined to her own family, where she will raise her son until she is 7 years old and teach her daughter how to make clothes, knit, cook, arrange food and manage slaves. Learning these skills is the result of the education of Athenian girls, unlike her brother who received formal education at the age of seven. This kind of education is supervised by an educator. A slave sends his son to school every day to let his father know his progress. My son can learn arithmetic, music, writing and reading, mainly Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. He should have remembered them all. This kind of education usually ends at the age of 15, although those who don't have to work can join a gym, where they can further study topics such as science and Greek philosophy.
divorce
In ancient Greece, the process of men applying for divorce was much simpler than that of women. In Athens, all a husband has to do is send his wife back to his father's house and pay back the dowry. When the wife is found guilty of adultery, the husband should divorce her to avoid the legality of having children. For women, divorce is more complicated. First, she needs to make her request in front of the consul (one of the chief municipal officials), and then get the support of her father or the closest male relatives. If the marriage proves barren, the wife's father can also force a divorce (even if neither husband nor wife wants a divorce). According to Herodotus' record in the sixth volume of History, Sparta followed the same principle; Infertility is the cause of divorce.
Love in ancient Greece
Throughout ancient Greece, romantic love was widely recorded in philosophy and poetry. So much so that the belief of soul mates held by many people today was first ignited in Plato's "Drinking Articles". Love of this nature is not often talked about as the existence of marriage. Many discussions about romantic love in ancient Greece focused on its existence in male homosexual relations outside marriage. However, if couples are lucky, there may be love in marriage, even if it is not the cause of love. Examples of marriage and love depicted in art can be explained from the tombs of Philomelo and Platane. The stone tablet found in Kerimeikos dates back to the 5th century BC. The relief on the tombstone shows the couple holding hands, symbolizing the lasting unity between the deceased and their loved ones.
When it comes to love in ancient Greece, a frequently mentioned name is Sappho (630-570 BC), a Greek lyric poet from Lesbos. Her description of the woman she loves and her heartbreak if her feelings are not answered. Make her one of the most famous names in ancient Greek literature. In a male-centered world, Sappho wrote her love for other women from the perspective of women, showing different social constructions of love. In her poems, Sappho describes love as both beautiful and painful, depending on the state of the relationship. For example, in segment 94, when neither of them wants to leave each other, she is saying goodbye to her lover:
Frankly speaking, I wish I was dead:
She's leaving me.
Sometimes I cry many times, and she tells me:
Oh, how sad we have suffered,
Sappho, because I left you against my will.
So I gave her this answer:
Go have fun, but remember me, because you know how much we cherish you.
If not, then I will remind you.
Everything we have.
Lovely * * * sharing;
For many violets,
A garland of saffron and roses.
..... you knit a sweater next to me.
..... there are many flowers.
Weave twisted garlands
You put it around your slender neck.
..... you were painted.
A kind of perfume, which smells like flowers.
..... although very suitable for the queen.
On the bed, soft and gentle
..... You got your wish ... "
In the first section, Sappho describes the pain of despair and the conflict of people who want to hurt you, which is a very recognizable and eternal feeling. Sappho tells us that even in the early days of ancient Greek literature, people have realized that love can cause strong and sometimes even contradictory feelings. This is also well known in the clip 130. She calls love "a bittersweet and invincible creature-unprepared for you". This poem is marked "bittersweet" (γ λ υ κ? The word π ι κ ν) was first used in literature.
In his symphonies, Plato also talked about love as an overwhelming force that connects two people. Plato's main concern is the relationship of child molestation in classical Athens-the relationship between adult males (erastes) and teenage boys (eromenos). These relationships are the social norms of the upper class, and their functions are usually regarded as educational, although they definitely involve sexual factors. Perhaps the most striking speech at Plato's seminar was aristophanes's; It puts forward the idea that an innate force drives us to find the other half. Plato's aristophanes even discusses the reaction of two people who love each other when their bodies melt and merge together. This story is very special, and may even be written for comedy (because aristophanes is a comedy playwright), but it implies the idea of soul mate and having the "other half", which is still very common in our society today.
First, aristophanes explained that there were three genders-male, female and hermaphrodite-long ago. They were all round, with two sets of limbs and two faces. These early humans were very powerful. They tried to attack the gods, so Zeus proposed cutting them in half to weaken their strength. Apollo healed the wound by closing the navel, but now human beings have left a bigger wound, that is, losing the other half. Now both sides are eager for the other half. Zeus pitied them and invented sex to solve the problem. In this way, Plato also introduced the importance of sex in interpersonal relationships and the relationship between this desire and love.
* * * In ancient Greece
In ancient Greece, attitudes and views on sex varied according to gender. Women's sexual behavior is usually surrounded by stigma and suspicion, especially in classical Athens, because their main role in society is to give birth to legal children. On the other hand, men's sexual orientation is handled very loosely. In Demosthenes Against Niera, he said: "We keep mistresses for pleasure, concubines for taking care of our people, and wives for giving birth to our children and becoming faithful guardians of our family" (59, 122).
It is socially acceptable for men to participate in extramarital sexual relations. Men can hire * * * and have concubines, and they will not be considered disloyal. For example, hetairai is often used for symposiums-popular gatherings consisting of banquets and entertainment. Unlike Ai (who usually works in a brothel), Hetera is a well-educated woman who can be employed not only by men, but also by their skills in Greek dance, music and conversation. Some men also choose to have palakae (concubines), usually slaves that men will buy and bring into their families.
Men can also participate in pedophile relationships. The ancient Greeks did not look at sex or love from the perspective of gender as they did from the perspective of power dynamics. Therefore, the only thing that will bring shame in a relationship is to be a passive partner in a relationship with another man. Peer relationships are usually recognized by eromenos' father because they are considered to play an important role in educating and integrating upper-class men into society.
Although men's extramarital affairs were common in ancient Greece, they were severely condemned by women. The pressure of loyalty to women in ancient Greece made her sex a little-known topic. For the same reason, the ideal woman usually seems unknown. Throughout the classical literature, Penelope's loyalty in Homer's epic Odyssey is regarded as a symbol of the ideal Greek woman. While waiting for Odysseus to return from the Trojan War, she turned down hundreds of suitors. In doing so, Penelope showed her loyalty to her husband and celebrated her odyssey of lack of interest in other men in her last book. Ghost Agamemnon said her virtue was immortal. Moreover, from what we know about the sexual attitude of classical Athenians towards women, we will definitely see that this ideal has existed for hundreds of years.