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

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

parents, some to foreigners, some to barbarians, some to strange houses, others to such as deserve reproach. And in such a lot, after a single night has united us, we have to acquiesce and think that it is well.”

In general one took account of the law of nature, according to which the woman fades more rapidly than the man, by taking care that the bride was substantially younger than the bridegroom. ‘Thus Euripides (frag. 24, TGF., Nauck) expressly says: “Tt is highly wrong to join together two young persons of the same age; for the strength of man lasts far longer, while the beauty of the female body passes away more rapidly.”

Hence, if a father could not soon find a husband for his daughter after she was of marriageable age, he had recourse to one of those obliging women who made a trade of match-making and were called Promnestrie or Promnestrides. ‘That their chief cleverness consisted in putting the excellent qualities of the girl in the clearest possible light is a matter of course, and it is the subject of special remark by Xenophon (Memorab., 11, 6, 36) and Plato (Theetetus, 150).

It appears from the latter that their trade did not enjoy the highest reputation and might in many cases be combined with procuration. In the Sorceresses the splendid second idyll of Theocritus, the girl, aflame with love, sends her confidential maid to fetch the beautiful Daphnis, with whom she had fallen in love. She brings the longed-for swain, who after a love scene, wonderfully described with all the glow of sensual beauty, “ made me unhappy, only a bad woman instead of a wife, and made me lose my virginity.”

If, then, with or without the assistance of a matchmaker, the suitable man was found, the betrothal (éyy¥nos) could take place. By this act of civil law we must only understand the public ratification of the wish of the two contracting parties

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