formal engagement, the Homeric poems furnish us with scanty evidence.
There is no mention, in fact, of any promise or vow attending it. The
expression δαινύναι γάμον, in Od. iv. 3, seems to contain all that
would be included by us when we speak of celebrating marriage. Not
that it was the mere banquet that created the conjugal relation: it
was doubtless the ἀμφάδιος γάμος, the solemn public acknowledgment, to
which relatives and friends, and, in such a case as that of Hermione,
the public or people of the state, thus became witnesses. This subject
will be further considered in connection with the case of Briseis.
~_Perpetuity of the tie of marriage._~
3. If the mode of entry into the obligations of married life was
as simple and indeterminate as we have supposed, such a want of
formalities greatly enhances the strength of the testimony borne by the
facts of the heroic age to what may be called the natural perpetuity of
the marriage contract.
It is a very remarkable circumstance, that, of the two great poems
of Homer, each should in its own way bear emphatic testimony to this
great, and, for all countries that can bear it, this most precious law.
Neither poem presents us with any case of a divorced wife; of a couple
between whom the marriage tie, after having once been duly formed,
had ceased to subsist. And each poem in its own way raises this
negative evidence to a form of the greatest cogency, from its happening
to present the very circumstances under which, if under any, the
dissolution of the bond would have been acknowledged.
In the Iliad, the wife of Menelaus, his κουριδίη ἄλοχος, has been
living for many years in _de facto_ adultery with Paris. The line
between marriage on the one hand, and continued cohabitation together
with public recognition on the other, being faintly drawn, Helen is
familiarly known in Troy as the wife of Paris; so she is called by the
Poet, and so she calls herself[918]. Menelaus, too, is described as
her former husband[919]. Whether this was a mere acquiescence in a
certain state of facts, or the regular result of more relaxed usages
respecting marriage in Troy, may be doubtful. But it is clear that the
view of the Greeks was directly opposite. They never speak of Paris as
the husband of Helen. In their estimation, all the rights of Menelaus
remained entire; and, as we shall see, it appears that, even while
the possession of them was withheld from him, he acknowledged the
reciprocal obligations. Nay, Hector himself seems to describe Helen
as still the wife of Menelaus; γνοίης χ’ οἵου φωτὸς ἔχεις θαλερὴν
παράκοιτιν[920]. The war was (so to speak) juridically founded on the
fact, that the lawful marriage was not dissolved by adultery, even
with the addition of all that followed: that the relation of Helen to
her ancient husband was unchanged. Accordingly, Agamemnon recollects
with pain, that if his brother should die, he will no longer be in a
condition to demand her restoration, and to enforce it by arms, for his
soldiers will forthwith return home[921].
[918] Il. iii. 427. xxiv. 763.
[919] Il. iii. 140. Of Deiphobus, we are never told that he was Helen’s
husband: and he could only for a very short time have had possession of
her. The only trace of the connection is that, when Helen went down to
the horse, Deiphobus followed her. Od. iv 276.
[920] Il. iii. 53.
[921] Il. iv. 169-75.
The result is in full conformity with this view. When the war ends,
Helen resumes her place as a matter of course in the house of Menelaus.
She bears it with unconstrained and perfect dignity; and her relations
to her husband carry no mark of the woful interval, except that its
traces indelibly remain in her own penitential shame.
It is plain that the Greeks heartily detested the crime of adultery:
for one of the three great chapters of accusation against the Suitors
is, that they wooed the wife of Ulysses in his lifetime[922]. But it
is not less plain that they knew nothing of the idea, that by that
crime it was placed in the power of any person to obtain or to confer
a release from the obligations of marriage.
[922] Od. xxii. 38.
Next to adultery, desertion or prolonged absence has afforded the most
favoured plea for the destruction, so far as human law can destroy it,
of the marriage bond. And indeed it is hardly possible to push the
opposite doctrine to its extreme, and to say that no married person
may remarry, except with demonstrative evidence of the death of the
original husband or wife respectively. Probably, however, no period of
the world has exhibited a more stringent application of the doctrine
of indissolubility to the case of desertion, than that on which the
plot of the Odyssey is founded; where, after an absence of the husband
prolonged to the twentieth year, Penelope still waits his return; prays
that death may relieve her from the dread necessity of making a new
choice; and, thus directed by her own conscience and right feeling,
likewise apprehends condemnation by the public judgment in the event of
her proceeding to contract a new engagement[923].
[923] Od. xvi. 75.
The Heroic age has left no more comely monument, than its informal, but
instinctive, and most emphatic sense, thus recorded for our benefit,
of the sanctity of marriage, of the closeness of the union it creates,
and of the necessity of perpetuity as an element of its capacity to
attain its chief ends, and to administer a real discipline to the human
character.
~_Greek ideas of incest._~
4. A further proof of the elevated estimate of marriage among the
Greeks is afforded by their views, so far as they can be traced, of the
offence termed incest.
The Homeric deities, indeed, were released in this respect, as in
others, from all restraint. Eris, or Enuo[924], was both the sister
and the concubine of Mars: Juno, the sister and the wife of Jupiter.
Æolus[925], though called φίλος ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσιν, must have been more
than man; because Jupiter had made him warden of the Winds, which it
was his prerogative to confine or to let loose[926]. And in virtue,
I suppose, of belonging to the class of superior beings, his six
daughters were, without any consciousness of offence, the wives, the
αἰδοῖαι ἄλοχοι, of his six sons[927].
[924] Il. iv. 441.
[925] Od. x. 2.
[926] Od. x. 20.
[927] Od. x. 7.
In Troy, Helen apparently becomes the wife of two brothers in
succession. We must not overrate the force of merely negative evidence,
but it will be observed that Homer does not furnish us with any trace
of this usage among the Greeks. The story of Phœnix probably implies,
that the connection of the same woman with a father and a son was
incestuous; for the full efficacy of the remedy proposed by his mother
turns on the supposition, that there would remain to his father no
alternative but incest after Phœnix had gained his object, and that
such an alternative would at once deter him from the love of the
stranger.
In Scheria, Alcinous is married to Arete, the daughter of his elder
brother Rhexenor[928]. Tyro was the wife of Cretheus, and was
apparently also his niece[929]. Again, we appear to find in the Iliad
an example of a marriage, by one shade yet less desirable, that of
a man with his aunt. Tydeus, the father of Diomed, was married to a
daughter of Adrastus: and Ægialeia the wife of Diomed, as she is called
Ἀδρηστίνη, was probably his aunt likewise[930].
[928] Od. vii. 65, 6.
[929] See Achæis, sect. ix. Od. xi. 235-7.
[930] Il. iv. 121.
We have also among the Trojans an example of a man’s marriage with his
aunt. Iphidamas, son of Antenor[931], was brought up in the house of
Cisses his maternal grandfather; and he contracted a marriage with his
mother’s sister just before proceeding to the war.
[931] Il. xi. 220-6.
At the same time, the law of incest is clearly a progressive one from
the infancy of mankind onwards, and what we have to consider is not
so much its precise extent, as the degree of genuine aversion with
which the violation of it is regarded. Upon this subject there can be
no doubt, when we read the passage in the Eleventh Odyssey respecting
the μέγα ἔργον of Œdipus and Epicaste, and the fearful consequences
which, though it was done in ignorance, it entailed upon them[932]. In
principle, then, that restriction of the field of choice, which adds
so greatly to the intimacy and firmness of the marriage tie, was fully
recognised in Greece.
[932] Od. xi. 271-80.
Neither do we want traces in Homer of that remarkable effect of the
unifying power of marriage, which confers upon each partner in the
union an equal and common relation to the family of the other, by a
convention which has so much of the moral strength of fact. The most
remarkable of all the indications upon this subject in the poems is
that, which relates to the future life of Menelaus. He is said to
be elected to the honour of a place in the region of Elysium after
this life, not in virtue of his own merits, but as being, through his
marriage with Helen, the son-in-law of Jupiter.
The recognition of relationships through the wife or husband to the
husband or wife respectively, and the existence of names to describe
them, is a sign of the completeness of the union effected by the
marriage tie. That these terms were not merely formal and ceremonious,
we may judge from the speech of Alcinous:
ἦ τίς τοι καὶ πηὸς ἀπέφθιτο Ἰλιόθι πρὸ
ἐσθλὸς ἐὼν, γαμβρὸς ἢ πενθερὸς, οἵτε μάλιστα
κήδιστοι τελέθουσι, μεθ’ αἷμά τε καὶ γένος αὐτῶν[933].
[933] Od. viii. 581-3.
Now of these words we have the following;
πηὸς, for any relative by affinity;
ἐκυρὸς, πενθερὸς, father-in-law;
ἐκυρὴ, mother-in-law;
δαὴρ, brother-in-law;
γαλοὼς, sister-in-law;
γαμβρὸς, son-in-law;
νυὸς, daughter-in-law;
μητρυίη, stepmother; or the lawful wife, in relation to a spurious son.
There is but one real example, Eeribœa, of a stepmother in Homer (Il.
v. 389).
And, lastly, we have εἰνατεὶρ, husband’s sister-in-law, a relationship
not expressed by any word in the English and many other languages. The
εἰνατέρες are always separate from the γαλόῳ.
The formation of this large circle of relationships by affinity is the
correlative to a well-defined strictness in the marriage law. For these
relationships would mean nothing, but would simply betoken and even
breed confusion, unless marriage were perpetual and incest eschewed.
Friedreich[934] truly observes, that the law of incest, instead of
being tightened, was relaxed at a later period in Greece; a very
decided mark of moral retrogression, which cannot be cancelled by all
the splendours of her history.
[934] Realien, c. III. ii.
~_Fidelity in married life._~
5. We come now to the remaining question; how was this great
obligation practically observed in the Greece of the heroic age?
Part, at least, of the answer is easy to give. By women it was observed
admirably. Except only in the case of Anteia, two generations old,
there is no instance in Homer of a woman who seeks the breach of
it. The forcible or half forcible seduction[935], and progressive
contamination, of a part of the unmarried women who belong to the
household of Ulysses, is one of the three great crimes which draw
down from Heaven such fearful vengeance upon the Suitors. Of the
παλλακὶς, we hear but twice in the poems; nor can we say that this word
meant more than a concubine[936]. Among the Greek chieftains, cases
of homicide are more frequent than those of bastardy. And when such
instances are mentioned, it is not in the hardened manner of later
times.
[935] Od. xxii. 37, κατευνάζεσθε βιαίως.
[936] Il. ix. 449. Od. xiv. 203.
It is something at least that, in such matters, a nation should be
alive to shame. We have various signs that this was so in Greece. One
of them is the tender expression[937]:
[937] Il. ii. 514, cf. xvi 184.
παρθένος αἰδοίη, ὑπερώϊον εἰσαναβᾶσα.
It must be remembered, when we touch upon these morbid parts in human
life and nature, that the society of that period did not avail itself
of the expedient of the professional corruption of a part of womankind
in order to relieve the virtue of the residue from assault.
Among the Greek chieftains and their families, Polydore, a sister of
Achilles, had a spurious son[938]. Nestor[939] sprang from a father of
spurious birth. Each Ajax had a spurious brother. Only Menelaus of all
the chiefs is mentioned as having himself had an illegitimate son. This
son, who has the touching name of Megapenthes, was born to him by a
slave, evidently after the rape of Helen; he was apparently recognised
in part; his marriage was celebrated at the same time with that of his
legitimate sister Hermione, but it was contracted with a person of
lower station. He was τηλύγετος, the last as well as the first; though
Helen, owing, as the Poet intimates, to a divine decree, had no more
children, with whom to console her husband, after her return from the
abduction.
[938] Il. xvi. 175.
[939] Od. xi. 254.
The superior rank conferred by lawful birth is in every case strongly
marked; and this perhaps is the reason why we never find the succession
to sovereignty in Greece disturbed by illegitimate offspring.
The great majority of illegitimate births in Homer are those ascribed
to the paternity of deities. It is probable that this extraction
may be pleaded to cover sometimes marriages which were conceived to
be beneath the station of the woman; sometimes instances like that
of Astyoche[940], when war had both excited passion, and provided
opportunities and victims for its gratification[941]. Setting these
cases aside, the cases of illegitimacy in heroic Greece appear to be
rare.
[940] Il. ii. 658-60.
[941] Achæis, or Ethnology, Sect. ix. p. 534.
At the same time, instances are found[942] in which a spurious
child (only, however, I think in the case of a son) is brought up
in a manner approaching to that of the legitimate offspring: and a
certain relationship is acknowledged to exist, for the wife is said
to be μητρυίη, or step-mother, to the illegitimate son. In the case
of Pedæus, it was Theano, Antenor’s wife, who herself educated the
bastard: but it is plain that in Troas concubinage was far more fully
recognised, than in Greece.
[942] Il. v. 69-71. Od. xiv. 203.
Agamemnon in the First Iliad, as we have seen, when announcing his
attention to make Chryseis a partner of his bed, by no means treats
this concubinage as being what it would have been with Priam, a matter
of course and requiring no apology, but founds it upon his preferring
her to his wife Clytemnestra[943].
[943] Il. i. 112.
In the camp before the walls of Troy it certainly appears as if by
the use of the word γέρας, prize, Homer might, as it is commonly
assumed, mean to indicate, for most of the principal chiefs, that they
had captives taken in war for concubines. But the point is far from
clear; and at any rate Menelaus, as is observed by Athenæus, forms
an exception[944]. This circumstance affords rather a marked proof
of Greek ideas with respect to the durability of the marriage tie;
for that author is probably right in ascribing it to his being, as it
were, in the presence of his wife Helen. This concubinage, however,
appears to have been single in each case where it prevailed; or, if it
was otherwise, Homer has at least deemed the circumstance unfit to be
recorded. There is no sign that the seven Lesbian damsels of Il. ix.
128 were concubines.
[944] Athen. xiii. 3. ὅτι οὐδαμῶς τῆς Ἰλιάδος Ὅμηρος ἐποίησε Μενελάῳ
συγκοιμωμένην παλλακίδα, πᾶσι δοὺς γυναῖκας.
Achilles, after the removal of Briseis, had Diomede[945] for the
companion of his couch. But Briseis appears to have had his attachment
in a peculiar degree. He calls her his ἄλοχον θυμάρεα[946]. It is said
that the word ἄλοχος may mean a concubine[947]. I do not find any
passage in Homer, except this of Il. ix., where it may not with the
most obvious propriety be translated ‘wife.’ It has its highest force,
no doubt, in such expressions as μνηστὴ ἄλοχος and κουριδίη ἄλοχος:
even as we say intensively ‘wedded wife.’ But the term is the standing
phrase for wife, as much as τέκνα for children; and it is impossible,
consistently with what we see of the usages of marriage among the
Greeks, to suppose that the same term was alike applicable to wives
and concubines. Nor is it necessary to draw such a conclusion from
this passage. We might be tempted to suppose, that Achilles here puts
a strain as it were upon the use of the word, and for the moment calls
Briseis his wife, in order to prepare the way for the tremendous and
piercing sarcasm which immediately follows[948]:
[945] Il. ix. 664.
[946] Ibid. 336.
[947] Damm, Liddell and Scott. In Od. iv. 623, Nitzsch considers that
ἄλοχοι must mean wives of the δαιτύμονες. In Od. ix. 115, I find no
reason for departing from the plain meaning of wives. It would be
giving too much credit to the Cyclopes for civilization, were we to
suppose that they recognised a distinction between wife and concubine.
[948] Il. ix. 340.
ἦ μοῦνοι φιλέουσ’ ἀλόχους μερόπων ἀνθρώπων
Ἀτρεῖδαι;
But we may, I think, more justly, and without any resort to figure,
observe, that the whole argument of this passage turns upon and
requires us to suppose his having treated Briseis as he would have
treated a wife. So likewise his declaration, that every good man loves
and cares for his wife, becomes insipid, and the whole comparison with
the case of Menelaus senseless, unless we are to give the force of wife
to the name ἄλοχος.
Probably the explanation may be, that she was designated for marriage
with him; for in the Nineteenth Book, where she utters a lamentation
over Patroclus, she declares how that chief kindly encouraged her to
bear up in her widowhood and captivity, promising that she should
be the wife of Achilles, and that the banquets, which, with their
attendant sacrifices, seem to have constituted for the Homeric Greeks
the ceremonial of marriage, should be celebrated on their return to
Phthia[949]. I should therefore suppose that we might with strict
justice render ἄλοχος, in Il. ix. 336, ‘my bride;’ always remembering
that we are dealing with a relation that was not governed by rules, and
that might virtually inure by usage only.
[949] Il. xix. 295-9.
The subsequent passage[950], in which the hero speaks of marrying some
damsel of Hellas or Phthia, is quite consistent with this construction,
for, as it is plain that no actual marriage had been concluded between
them, his relation to Briseis terminated with her removal _de facto_.
The same passage, as well as the custom of Greece, makes it reasonable
to understand that the mother of Neoptolemus, whoever she may have
been, was now dead.
[950] Il. ix. 395-7.
~_Mode of contracting marriage._~
Indeed it is to be remembered all along, that we are speaking of
a state, rather than an act. We know nothing of a ceremonial of
Homeric marriage beyond the exchange of gifts and the celebration of
festivities in connection with the domicile, neither of which could
ordinarily have place in the case of a captive while continuing such.
She would grow into a wife in virtue of intention on the part of her
lord, confirmed by habit, and sealed by a full recognition when the
circumstances, that would alone admit of it, should have arrived.
The concubinage of the Greek chiefs, practised as it was during a long
absence from home, bears an entirely different domestic and social
character from that of Priam. It clearly constitutes, especially if the
connections were single, the mildest and least licentious of all the
forms in which the obligations of the marriage tie could be relaxed.
The presence of a concubine within the precinct of the family seems to
have been differently viewed by the Greeks; for here, and here only,
do we find the disparaging word παλλακὶς (whence the Latin _pellex_)
applied to a person in that position. The two cases of it are as
follows. In one of them Ulysses feigns a story of his having been a
son of the Cretan Castor, born of a παλλακὶς, but (which he mentions
as a departure from the general rule) regarded by his father as much
as were his legitimate children[951]. The other is the instance of
Phœnix in the Ninth Iliad. Amyntor his father had an intended or actual
concubine; and, bestowing his affections on her, slighted the mother
of his child. She, in resentment or self-defence, entreated her son
Phœnix to cross or anticipate his father[952], and win the woman to his
own embraces[953]. He complied; and thus drew down upon himself the
dire wrath and curses of his father, which kindled his own anger in
return; but he restrained himself from the act of parricide, and became
a fugitive instead. This legend is somewhat obscure; but it appears
to indicate plainly that concubinage was not a recognised institution
among the Greeks, as it seems to have been among the Trojans.
[951] Od. xiv. 199-204.
[952] The expression is παλλακίδι προμιγῆναι.
[953] Il. ix. 447, and seqq.
So again, when Laertes had purchased Euryclea[954], we are told that he
never attempted to make her his concubine, anticipating the resentment
of his wife. It is plain, therefore, that this would have been an
admitted offence on his part; and accordingly, that concubinage was
contrary to the ideas of Greece respecting conjugal obligation.
[954] Od. i. 433.
~_Dignity of conjugal manners._~
Within the precinct of the Greek marriages, which was secured and
fenced in the manner we have seen, there prevailed that tenderness,
freedom, and elevation of manners, which was the natural offspring
of a system in the main so sound and strict. The general tone of the
relations of husband and wife in the Homeric poems is thoroughly
natural; it is full of dignity and warmth; a sort of noble deference,
reciprocally adjusted according to the position of the giver and
the receiver, prevails on either side. I will venture to add, it is
full also of delicacy, though we must be content to distinguish,
in considering this point, between what is essential and what is
conventional, and must make some allowance for the directness and
simplicity of expression that characterized an artless age[955].
[955] See Friedreich, Realien, c. ii. §. 56. pp. 196-200, where this
subject is excellently treated.
With this delicacy was combined a not less remarkable freedom in the
Greek manners with respect to women. We find Penelope appearing in
her palace at will, on all ordinary occasions, before the Suitors;
although, on the other hand, no woman would be present where any thing
like license was to be exhibited, as we may judge from the case of the
lay of Demodocus in the Eighth Odyssey. The general freedom of woman is
however most fully exhibited in the case of Nausicaa. She goes forth
into the country with her maidens unattended. When Ulysses appears
there is no fear of him as a man, or even as a stranger, but only from
his condition at the moment. This difficulty she surmounts with a
dignity which she could not have possessed by virtue of her personal
character only, nor except in a case where great liberty was habitually
and traditionally enjoyed by women.
Her arrangement of the manner in which he is to enter the city apart
from her, and her regard in this matter to opinion, both rest upon the
same presumption of her freedom from petty control, as does her playful
demand upon Ulysses for ζωάγρια, or salvage.
Again, how remarkable it is that Alcinous, far from being surprised
that his maiden daughter should have entered into conversation with
a stranger, is actually on the point of finding fault with her for
not having shown a greater forwardness, and brought him home in
her own company: a reproach, from which Ulysses saves her by his
intercession[956].
[956] Od. vii. 298, 307.
~_Social position of the wife._~
It is not only from this or that particular, but it is from the whole
tone of the intercourse maintained between men and women, that we are
really to judge what is the social position of the latter.