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

MARRIAGE CUSTOMS

(Thucydides ii, 15), and in Thebes the river Ismenus (Eurip., Phoenissae, 347). In the so-called tenth letter of Aeschines we read the interesting note: ‘ In the district of Troas it is the custom for brides to go to the Scamander and bathe in it, and utter the words sanctified by tradition: ‘'Take, O Scamander, my virginity’”’. In regard to this naive custom it once happened that a young man represented himself to the bathing maiden as the god Scamander and literally fulfilled her prayer to take away her virginity. Four days later, when the pair, who had in the meantime married, were proceeding in the marriage procession to the temple of Aphrodite, she caught sight of the young man among the spectators, and cried out in alarm: “There is Scamander to whom I gave my virginity!” To quiet her, she was told that the same thing had happened in the Meander in Magnesia, which at least shows the fact, interesting for the history of culture, that the custom of brides bathing in the river before the eyes of all must have existed in several places.

We are reminded of the fact that in primitive times the bride was carried off by the ceremony which, certainly, was customary only in Sparta. There an apparent rape of the bride was carried out, apparent since her father and mother were informed of it beforehand. Plutarch (Lycurgus, 15) gives us the following account: “ The wedding itself took place in this manner. Every man carried off a maiden, but not a young one nor one under age for marriage, but one who was fully grown up and marriageable. The so-called bridesmaid received the maiden who had been carried off, shaved her head close, and put on her a man’s dress and shoes, laid her on a bed of straw, and left her alone in the dark. The bridegroom then crept in secretly, neither drunk nor weakened by dissipation, but quite sober, and after he had, as always, taken a meal with his table-companions, loosed her

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