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

MARRIAGE CUSTOMS

to marry, which was required to make the ceremony legally valid. As a rule the amount of the dowry was settled at the same time. On these occasions it sometimes happened that charitable people equipped the daughters or sisters of those without means at their own expense (Lysias, De bonis Aristoph., 59), and, indeed, that the daughters of poor but deserving citizens received their dowry from the State ; for intance, we are told that the two daughters of Aristeides (Plutarch, Aristeides, 27) each received 3,000 drachme, i.e., about £112. We need hardly mention that, besides money, the dowry consisted of linen, clothing, finery, household goods and furniture ; slaves are occasionally also mentioned as an additional contribution. It was asserted that there was a law of Solon (Plutarch, Solon, 20) that “ready money as part of the dowry should be excluded, in order that marriage, which is intended for the procreation of children and the bond of love between man and woman, might not become a matter of money ”’, a law which like so many others probably only existed on paper, although Plato (Laws, vi, 774d) again advances it to a demand. Besides, this law may have sprung from an originally intelligent reflection, for, as it is very correctly remarked in the Amatorius (7; see also De educ. puer., 19) of Plutarch, it is far better to wear chains than to be the slave of one’s wife’s dowry, wherefore in another passage he gives an emphatic warning against too wealthy a marriage.

When the legal formalities were complied with a family feast took place in the father-in-law’s house, as might be gathered from a_ beautiful passage in Pindar (Olympia, vii, 1): “ As one taking a goblet in his wealthy hand, foaming with the dew of wine, presents it to his young son-in-law for a draught welcoming him from one home to another, a goblet all of gold, chief of his possessions, for the sake of good cheer and in honour of the alliance, and if friends are present makes him envied for