Ancient Greek Wedding Custom and Its Reinforcement of the Oppression of Women
To what extent did the marriage customs in Ancient Athens reinforce the systematic oppression of women?
IB Subject Area: History
Word Count: 3451
12/5/17
Table of Contents
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………2
Structure of Athenian Society………………………………………………………….……….3
A Description and Analysis of the Ritual of Marriage………………………………………..5
The Three-Day Wedding…………………………………………………………….…………..8
The Betrothal Ceremony and Dowry……………………………………………………….….9
Proaulia………………………………………………………………………………………….10
The Importance of Fertility, Virginity, and the Consummation………………………….….11
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….…………13
Bibliography………………………………………………………….………………………….15
Introduction
The deep-seated belief of women’s inferiority has practically Paleolithic origins. A review of the prominent late 19th-century biological writings reveals that a major building block of early evolution theory was the belief that women were physically and intellectually inferior to men. Female inferiority was a logical conclusion of the Darwinian worldview because males were believed to be subjected to far greater selective pressures than females, especially in war; competition for mates, food, and clothing. However, women were protected from selection by norms that required adult males to provide for and protect women and children. Darwinists taught that, as a result of this protection, natural selection operated far more actively on males than on females, producing male superiority in virtually all intellectual and skill areas. As a result, males became “more evolved” than women. Of course, in Ancient Athens, even the most knowledgeable of philosophers did not come anywhere close to analyzing female inferiority as a factor that developed with evolution. However, both Darwinians and Ancient Greek philosophers held a key similarity: they were all men. For that reason, it is unsurprising why women’s roles in both survival and society were deeply undervalued.
In this essay, a certain well-established tradition will be scrutinized to prove how societal customs reinforced the oppression of women. The ritual of marriage and the customs that follow the process of getting married will be thoroughly analyzed. There will be time travel and a jump over the Atlantic to where the stage will be set: Ancient Greece, more specifically, the city-state of Athens. Athens was infested with oppression. To fully understand the extent to which women were oppressed, an understanding of the social structure of Ancient Athens is necessary. Unfortunately, there is almost no first-hand material to assist the modern scholar to determine how the women of Athens felt about their condition; nearly all of the information is from the male historians of the period. These historians utilize the ancient writings of that era as well as ancient vases, that most commonly depicted wedding scenes. Utilizing these sources and their previous knowledge of Ancient Greece, the historians interpreted their meaning to the best of their ability. Using these sources, a considerable effort will be made to answer: To what extent did the marriage customs in Ancient Athens reinforce the systematic oppression of women?
Structure of Athenian Society
Athenian society was composed of four main social classes: slaves, metics (non-citizen freemen), women, and citizens. Within each of these broad classes were several sub-classes. Slaves were the lowest class in Athenian society. Even still, they were far less harshly treated than in most other Greek cities. Slaves and freemen were difficult to tell apart in Athens. Slaves were indeed a fundamental part of the economy; the most prized slaves worked as tutors and police officials. The next in status were domestic slaves, who were often considered as a part of the family. Finally, the slaves who worked in the Laurium silver mines were treated the worst and basically dropped like flies on a daily basis. Metics were often employed on more menial, but nevertheless vital tasks – including construction and maintenance. Metics were usually Greeks from other city-states.
The remaining men were citizens. They were divided into numerous classes whose status reflected the degree to which they were self-reliant. Ideally, the Greeks believed professions that relied on the payment of others were less favorable than professions in which a citizen was seen to be self-sufficient, such as farming. The thetes were at the lowest end, the composition of which was urban craftsmen and rowers. In the middle ranks were the small farmers. At the very top were the aristocrats who owned large estates and traditionally made up the cavalry, though many fought as hoplites, which are foot soldiers. And then we have the women.
Women had few rights in male-dominated Athens, and their treatment was sometimes scarcely better than that of domestic slaves. Historian Don Nardo states, “throughout antiquity, most Greek women had few or no civil rights and many enjoyed little freedom of choice or mobility.” Unless they were prostitutes or courtesans, most wealthy women were largely confined to staying at home and running the household. Aristotle thought that women brought disorder, evil, and were “utterly useless and caused more confusion than the enemy.” Poorer women, ironically, seem to have enjoyed greater freedom, though this was largely due to necessity – their husbands would have spent their days working, forcing their wives to take on a number of responsibilities that wealthier women would have had servants or husbands to do. A woman’s main role in society in Athens was a reproductive and child-rearing role. The importance of a child’s legitimacy in Ancient Athens cannot be overstated. This is why women were kept isolated from the male world. To be a citizen of Athens, one had to be male and born of parents who were both born in Athens. Women have distinct connections to all of the other classes. Women shared a connection with the slaves because they were often treated as such. Women also had a connection with metics because both classes were not considered to be citizens of Athens. Finally, it is quite interesting how it was seen to be a good thing to be a self-sufficient man but women weren’t even given the chance to demonstrate the level to which they could be self-sufficient unless they were selling their bodies.
A Description and Analysis of The Ritual of Marriage
Kathleen Gough, an anthropologist who has studied marriage as a universal concept, has come up with a definition for marriage: “Marriage is a relationship established between a woman and one or more other persons, which provides that a child born to the woman under circumstances not prohibited by the rules of the relationship, is accorded full birth-status rights common to normal members of his society or social stratum.” Overall, this definition can definitely apply directly to marriage in Ancient Athens because in every marriage in Ancient Athens there was a woman involved. A child that was born from a married couple was considered legitimate, but not necessarily a citizen of Athens. The one complication with this definition is the insistence that there is such thing as a “normal” member of the society in which this child is born. As stated above, the social hierarchy of Ancient Athens contains categories upon categories of person, and each category has many subcategories. If there were to be a “normal” member of the society of Ancient Athens, it would be the slaves because they were the majority of the composition of the population of Ancient Athens.
Within Athenian society, the institution of marriage had many functions. The most important was to maintain control over Athenian women and their abilities to reproduce. There are many words in Ancient Greek that predominantly refers to one thing, but that very word can have a double meaning. For example, the word evangelion means the Gospel, but it also means good and new. The Ancient Greek word for marriage is gamos, but this word has a double meaning. It can also mean abduction. It is quite obvious why this is ironic because the word abduction refers to the action of taking someone away against their will. It’s almost as if there could be a reason for why this word means those two specific things. If so, it wouldn’t be impossible to guess which person involved in marriage in Ancient Greece is the one being ‘abducted’, per se. The verbal equivalent of gamos was gamein, a word which represented actions of the groom but also could refer to a purely sexual relationship rather than to be legally married.
This is significant because the point of marriage in Athens was to produce legitimate heirs, so in a way, the only true purpose for a marriage was basically acquiring permission to engage in sexual intercourse with a woman in order to continue the lineage of the men. This is a prime example of female objectification, one of the steps that can be taken in the process of full-blown dehumanization. When only men are considered to be citizens, it automatically places women a step below. Even as children, boys would be aware of their superiority over women in the eyes of society. The addition of immaturity creates a concoction that almost certainly leads to abuse of power and the further reinforcement of oppression because the disparity is one that can be seen even at a young age. The social hierarchy is indeed apparent the moment a child is born, as the genitalia that they leave their mother’s womb with will determine the course of the rest of their lives. When assurance of a continued lineage is only guaranteed when a wife bears a son, should the wife bear a daughter, everything will be blamed on her because it is easier to explain something when there is someone to blame for its occurrence, and who would ever blame the paternal figure in a patriarchal society?
The process that had to occur before the creation of legitimate children was, of course, the process of getting married. A woman in Ancient Athens was never living without the lurking shadow of a man following her close behind. To call the men in a woman’s life the “assigned oppressor” would be appropriate. When a girl was born, her assigned oppressor was her father. When she got married, at an age as young as twelve, her assigned oppressor became her husband and would be so for the rest of her life unless her husband were to die before her, which would make her father or her new husband the next assigned oppressor.
The Three-Day Wedding
The most important aspect of the Athenian wedding was the ritual process of the parthenos becoming a nymphe, a progression which ultimately provided momentum toward becoming a gyne. The foundation of the wedding ceremony was formed by this evolution of the bride. The wedding ceremony represented the alteration of a woman’s life, as she would be moving from her father’s house to her new husband’s home and would become sexually active for the first time in her life. This concept is demonstrated at various points throughout the nuptial ceremony.
The day before the wedding ceremony was called the proaulia. The proaulia was the day for sacrifices and dedications, which led directly into the day of the wedding, called the gamos. The gamos consisted of many rituals: feasting and singing, the wedding procession, other relatively unimportant ceremonies, and the consummation of the marriage. The following day, the epaulia, was a day for more feasting and for the giving of gifts. Each of these days, with their complete reconstruction, will be interpreted as they reflect the status of women in Classical Athens.
The importance of marriage to the society of Ancient Athens was reflected in the communality of the ritual. Marriage was not an institution focused on the benefits of the couple, but rather an institution designed to contribute to the good of society, regardless of the couples’ experience.
The Betrothal Ceremony and Dowry
The first step toward the wedding ceremony is basically an entire ritual of its own: the betrothal. Marriages were most often arranged for political reasons, as two wealthy families would share an influential bond once joined by the marriage of a daughter and a son. A girl, of whom was typically 15 years old, had absolutely no legal power in the arrangement of her marriage, and all formalities which essentially sealed her fate occurred entirely in her absence. The betrothal could have happened quite a few years before the marriage, even when the bride was still too young to conceive. This blatant disregard for the bride’s consent in her own betrothal indicates a very important fact of being a woman in Ancient Athens: male guardianship. A girl who gave herself to marriage without the authority of her legal guardian was considered to be no more than a concubine. This is a reflection of the fact that Athenian society viewed women as incapable of regulating their own lives.
The dowry was a crucial part of the betrothal process because it was a way to display the wealth of the Athenian family, and a substantial dowry would certainly raise the status of that family. A woman’s dowry, although it was in her name, was not hers; the men in her life had complete control over it. The betrothal ceremony was an agreement made between men for their own purposes, and there was absolutely no consideration for the women involved.
Proaulia
Before the nuptial ceremony could take place, sacrifices would take place in order to appease the gods on behalf of the couple. The goddesses Artemis, Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena would all receive wedding sacrifices. The most significant sacrifices were made by the father of the bride. Richard Seaford states that “the normal role of the proteleia appears to have been to give to the deity the life of an animal as a substitute for the life of the bride.”
The Athenian bride was often compared to an animal essentially being led to slaughter. Athenian dramas show a particular affinity for this metaphor, as seen through the myth of Iphigenia, who, believed herself to be a bride and was led to slaughter by her own father. Historians agree, articulating that the wedding ritual is quite close to a sacred ritual of sacrifice and that the bride would even be the “sacrificial victim.” Even the menstruation of a woman was compared to the blood that pours from a sacrificial animal. To add on even more, the word amnion in Greek, from which the term “amniotic fluid” is derived, could refer to a bowl used to catch the blood of a sacrificial animal.
There was a ritual bath that took place on the morning of the wedding ceremony. The purpose of the bathing ritual was to be a symbol of the pivotal coming-of-age rite for the bride, who, in case this was forgotten, was very young. Vase paintings appear to suggest that the groom did not bathe or maybe his bath was significantly less important than that of the bride’s. The water for the bath had to be sourced from a specific place, most likely because the ritual baths were meant to enhance the fertility of the bride. After the ritual bathing, the bride would be dressed in incredibly expensive clothing. It can sort of be imagined as the fattening of a pig before slaughter, or the final touches of finesse before a meal is served on a silver platter. The adornment of the bride is depicted on vase paintings quite frequently, as it was one of the most important parts of the ceremony. Probably the most significant component of the bridal attire was the wedding veil. The veil was dyed red with saffron because of its association with the menstrual cycle, as saffron was used to cure “menstrual ills.” Judith Lynn Sebesta, in her article “Visions of Gleaming Textiles and a Clay Core: Textiles, Greek Women, and Pandora,” describes it as thus: “Dressed in saffron-dyed veil and purple-dyed gown (both exceedingly expensive dyes), crowned with a diadem fashioned like a chaplet of leaves, and adorned with earrings, necklace, and bracelets, she was commodified as an object of desire, as a pleasing gift, part of the dowry that the father gave to promote his own prestige and to bestow prestige on her husband.” Llewellyn Jones agrees and states that the bride’s role as “a silent passive object of male control…was emphasized by placing her beneath the confines of the wedding veil.” This whole form of dress was a way for her to express her value to her husband and the new household, both economically and reproductively.
As previously discussed, the adornment of the bride is the representation of her family’s wealth, and thus she is symbolized as property which is transferred from one household to the other. She is, once again, objectified by her acquiescent position within the wedding procession. Despite the emphasis on the experience of the bride and groom, she remains a simple object in the metaphorical moving van to her new home.
The Importance of Fertility, Virginity and the Consummation of Marriage
The purpose of marriage was to create legitimate heirs to inherit the state, so the ability of the wife to conceive was of the utmost importance. Infertility was a concern for many. However, strangely enough, male infertility was not a concern; the Athenians did not believe such a problem could exist. Unlike the groom, the bride would typically be sexually inexperienced, seeing as though her virginity is of great importance. Raising a young woman was often likened to breaking in a young horse, and the marriage ceremony was seen as the final step in the process of taming a young woman. “Marriage and the Maiden: Narratives on the Parthenon” states that “just as warfare was seen as the determining activity of the young male, so marriage was regarded as the female’s ultimate and definitive destination.” A man becomes a man on his own, but a girl becomes a woman only through her relationship with her husband.
Even though a woman had essentially no sexual freedom, it was not the same for Athenian men. Athenian men found it necessary to control the sexuality of women in order to ensure the paternity of heirs. The virginity of a young bride was highly prized, as was the fidelity of a married woman. A young girl who had had premarital sex could be sold into slavery by her father. A wife who had had extramarital sex must be divorced. Although men in Classical Athens were limited to one legal wife, they were not subject to the same standards of sexual practice. It was both acceptable and legal for a man to have sex with hetairai, concubines, their own slaves, and resident foreign women.
A sense of distaste is prominent when modern scholars describe the consummation of an arranged marriage in Ancient Athens. The bride is especially compared to being led to slaughter during the consummation. During the procession, the bride is led through the streets of Athens, grasped on the wrist by her new husband. She is not a full person moving toward her future by her own accord but a piece of property being transferred from one kyrios to the next. Oakley and Sinos suggest that the guard prevented the bride’s friends from coming to her rescue should her cries of pain become too much to bear. In describing this part of the ceremony, words associated with rape and violence are frequently utilized. This obviously would create strong emotions about the bride’s experience during this part of the ritual, which, understandably, often makes it difficult for modern scholars to describe it. The pain and suffering of the young bride cannot be overemphasized. Behind a closed door, she completely submits to her husband, a man who likely only cares about the potential of her womb and little for her pleasure.
Conclusion
Women were viewed as empty vessels, no more than a container from which something useful may issue forth. Women were seen as children, unformed and in need of direction from grown men. Women were highly sexual beings, incapable of controlling their urges. Women were inferior to men in every possible sense and in need of supervision. Helen King, in her article “Bound to Bleed: Artemis and Greek Women,” notes that the many steps taken by a girl to become a woman – menstruation, marriage, the loss of virginity, and the birth of a child – are all controlled either by nature or by men; a young woman has no control over her destiny. The Athenian nuptial ceremony is a reflection of this fact. Her kyrios made the arrangements without her consent. Although she was the focus of the ceremony, in truth she was a passive object. She adorned herself with the family wealth and became an object, valued for her beauty. For her own protection, and to protect her expensive virtue, she was veiled. As an object, she was placed in the hand of her new husband. As an object, she passively attended the feasts and was lead through the streets to her new home. Like the abducted Persephone, she accepted an offering of fruit. She did not participate but rather submitted to the consummation. She would submit herself to her new husband and then receive gifts to acknowledge what she had lost. All of these things represent her inferiority as a woman. The entire Athenian wedding ceremony, from the betrothal to the consummation, confirmed her identity, at best, as a non-citizen, a woman.