Ancient Greek marriage law
||This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. (October 2009)|
Marriage as a public interest 
The ancient Greek legislators considered the relation of marriage a matter not merely of private, but also of public or general interest. This was particularly the case at Sparta, where the subordination of private interests and happiness to the public was strongly exemplified in the regulations. For instance, by the laws of Lycurgus, criminal proceedings might be taken against those who married too late (graphe opsigamiou) or unsuitably (graphe kakogamiou), as well as against those who did not marry at all (graphe agamiou). These regulations were founded on the generally recognised principle that it was the duty of every citizen to raise up a strong and healthy progeny of legitimate children to the state.
So entirely, in fact, did the Spartans consider the teknopoioia (childbearing) as the main object of marriage, which the state was bound to promote, that whenever a woman had no children by her own husband, she was not only allowed, but even required by the laws, to cohabit with another man. On the same principle, and for the purpose of preventing the extinction of his family, the Spartan king Anaxandridas II was allowed to cohabit with two wives, for whom he kept two separate establishments: a case of bigamy, which, as Herodotus observes, was not at all consistent with Spartan nor indeed with Hellenic customs. Thus the heroes of Homer appear never to have had more than one kouridie alochos: lawfully wedded wife; though they are frequently represented as living in concubinage with one or more.
Solon also seems to have viewed marriage as a matter in which the state had a right to interfere, for we are told that his laws allowed agamiou graphe, though the regulation seems to have grown obsolete in later times; at any rate there is no instance on record of its application. Plato too may be quoted to prove how general was this feeling, for according to his laws, any one who did not marry before he was thirty-five was punishable not only with atimia (loss of civil rights), but also with pecuniary penalties, and he expressly states that in choosing a wife everyone ought to consult the interests of the state, and not his own pleasure.
Selecting a spouse 
But independent of any public considerations there were also private or personal reasons (peculiar to the ancients) which made marriage an obligation. Plato mentions one of these the duty incumbent upon every individual to provide for a continuance of representatives to succeed himself as ministers of the Divinity (toi Theoi hyperetas an' hautou paradidonai). Another was the desire felt by almost every one, not merely to perpetuate his own name, but also to prevent his heritage being desolate, and his name being cut off, and to leave someone who might make the customary offerings at his grave. With this view, childless persons would sometimes adopt children that had been left to die or were simply unwanted.
By the Athenian law a citizen was not allowed to marry with a foreign woman, nor conversely, under very severe penalties. However, proximity by blood (anchisteia), or consanguinity (syngeneia), was not, with some few exceptions, a bar to marriage in any part of Greece; direct lineal descent was. Thus brothers were permitted to marry with sisters even, if not homometrioi or born from the same mother, as Cimon did with Elpinice, though a connection of this sort appears to have been looked on with abhorrence. In the earlier periods of society, indeed, we can easily conceive that a spirit of caste or family pride, and other causes such as the difficulties in the way of social intercourse would tend to make marriages frequent amongst near relations and connections. (Compare Book of Numbers^ c. xxxvi.)
At Athens, however, in the case of a father dying intestate, and without male children, his heiress had no choice in marriage; she was compelled by law to marry her nearest kinsman not in the ascending line; and if the heiress were poor (thessa) the nearest unmarried kinsman either married her or portioned her suitably to her rank. When there were several coheiresses, they were respectively married to their kinsmen, the nearest having the first choice (See Epikleros). The heiress in fact, together with her inheritance, seems to have belonged to the kinsmen of the family, so that in early times a father could not give his daughter (if an heiress) in marriage without their consent. But this was not the case according to the later Athenian law, by which a father was empowered to dispose of his daughter by will or otherwise; just as widows also were disposed of in marriage, by the will of their husbands, who were considered their rightful guardians (Kyrioi).
The same practice of marrying in the family (oikos), especially in the case of heiresses, prevailed at Sparta; thus Leonidas married the heiress of Cleomenes[disambiguation needed], as of anchisteia, or next of kin, and Anaxandrides, his own sister's daughter. Moreover, if a father had not determined himself concerning his daughter, it was decided by the king's court who among the privileged persons or members of the same family should marry the heiress. A resemblance to the Athenian law respecting heiresses is also found in the Jewish code, as detailed in Numbers (c. xxvii. 1 — 11), and exemplified in Ruth (c. iv.).
But match-making among the ancients was not, in default of any legal regulations, entirely left to the care and forethought of parents, for we read of women who made a profession of it, and who were therefore called promnestriai or promnestrides. The profession, however, does not seem to have been thought very honourable nor to have been held in repute, as being too nearly connected with a panderer (proagogos).
Dates for marriage 
Particular days and seasons of the year were thought auspicious and favourable for marriage amongst the Greeks. Aristotle speaks of the winter generally as being so considered, and at Athens the month Gamelion, partly corresponding to our January, received its name from marriages being frequently celebrated in it. Hesiod recommends marrying on the fourth day of the month and Euripides speaks as if the time of the full moon were thought favourable.
In Athens the engyesis, or betrothal, was in fact indispensable to the complete validity of a marriage contract. It was made by the natural or legal guardian (kyrios) of the bride elect, and attended by the relatives of both parties as witnesses. The law of Athens ordained that all children born from a marriage legally contracted in this respect should be legal gnesioi, and consequently, if sons, isomoiroi, are entitled to inherit equally or in gavel-kind. It would seem, therefore, that the issue of a marriage without espousals would lose their heritable rights, which depended on their being born ex astes kai engyetes gynaikos: i.e. from a citizen and a legally betrothed wife. The wife's dowry was also settled at the espousals.
At Sparta, the betrothal of the bride by her father or guardian (kyrios) was requisite as a preliminary of marriage, as well as at Athens. Another custom peculiar to the Spartans, and a relic of ancient times, was the seizure of the bride by her intended husband (see Herod, vi. 65), but of course with the sanction of her parents or guardians. She was not, however, immediately domiciled in her husband's house, but cohabited with him for some time clandestinely, till he brought her, and frequently her mother also, to his home. A similar custom appears to have prevailed in Crete, where, as we are told, the young men when dismissed from the agela of their fellows, were immediately married, but did not take their wives home till some time afterwards. Muller suggests that the children of this furtive kind of intercourse were called Parthenioi.
In cases of adultery by the wife, the Athenian law subjected the husband to Atimia, if he continued to cohabit with her, so that she was ipso facto divorced. But a separation might be effected in two different ways: by the wife leaving the husband, or the husband dismissing the wife. If the latter supposed her husband to have acted without sufficient justification in such a course, it was competent for her after dismissal, or rather for her guardians, to bring an action for dismissal (dike apopompes): the corresponding action if brought by the husband was a dike apoleipseos. If, however, a wife were ill-used in any way by her husband, he was liable to an action called dike kakoseos so that the wife was not entirely unprotected by the laws, a conclusion justified by a fragment in Athenaeus in which married women are spoken of as relying on its protection. But a separation, whether it originated from the husband or wife, was considered to reflect discredit on the latter independent of the difficulties and inconveniences to which she was subjected by it. At Sparta, barrenness on the part of a wife seems to have been a ground for dismissal by the husband; and from a passage in Dio Chrysostom, it has been inferred that women were in the habit of imposing suppositious children with a view of keeping (kataschein) their husbands: not but that the word admits of, if indeed it does not (from the tense) require, a different interpretation. The duties of an Athenian wife are stated somewhat in detail Oeconomicus (Xenophon).
See Also 
- Pollux, viii. 4 0
- Lycurg. 15.
- Mulller, Dorians., iv. 4. § 3.
- Xenophon. de Rep. Lac. i. 8.
- Herodotus. vi. 39, 40
- Buttmann, Lexilogus, 73
- Platner, Process, &c. vol. ii. p. 248.
- Leg. iv. p. 721
- Leg. vi. p. 773.
- Isaeus de Apoll. Hered. p. 66. Bek.
- Demosth. c.Neaer. p. 1350
- Isaeus, de Oiron. her. p. 72.
- Becker, Charikles, vol. ii. p. 448.
- Muller, Dorians, ii. 10. § 4.
- Demosth. c. Steph. p. 1134
- Demosth. c. Aphob. p. 814.
- Herod, vi. 57 ; Muller, /. c.
- Pollux, iii. 31.
- Plato, Theaet. 2. p. 150.
- Polit.'vu. 15
- Oper. 800
- Iphig. in Aulis. 707
- Demosth. c. Steph. p. 1134
- Meicr and Schoeman, p. 415.
- Muller, Dorians, ii. 4. § 2.
- Xen. de Rep. Lac. i. 5.
- Strabo, x. p. 482
- Demosth. c.Neaer. p. 1374.
- Athenaeus. xiii. p. 559
- Herod, vi. 61
- Orat. xv. p. 447