Marriage, a History by Stephanie Coontz Read Free Book Online Page A

ruled from 764 to 770. 25

Marriage Among the Common Folk of Ancient Society
    Marriage was a less turbulent affair among people who were not in the running for political power. But in most cases, marriage was still a matter of practical calculation rather than an arrangement entered into for individual fulfillment and the pursuit of happiness.
    For people with property, marriage was an economic transaction that involved the transfer or consolidation of land and wealth as well as the development of social networks. Even small landowners manipulated kin and marriage ties to consolidate property. For families with larger amounts of wealth, marriages in the ancient world were the equivalent of today’s business mergers or investment partnerships.
    Parents with property to administer were no more willing than their royal and aristocratic counterparts to allow their children to choose a spouse freely, or to leave a useful marriage merely because they were personally unhappy. On the other hand, parents might force a child to abandon a partner that he or she truly cared for. In ancient Athens, if a woman became an heiress (this could happen only if her father died without leaving a son), she could be claimed as a bride by her closest male relative, even if she was already married, in order to keep the property within the family. If the kinsman who claimed the heiress was also married, he could summarily divorce his wife, though he might considerately arrange a new marriage for her. 26
    Even when individuals could make their own choices about marriage and divorce, as wealthy Romans often did, their decisions frequently had more to do with politics and finances than with feelings of love or desire. Switching marital partners sometimes took place with as little emotional turmoil as we might feel in switching phone companies. Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.) divorced his wife Marcia and arranged for her to marry his friend Hortensius, in order to strengthen the friendship and family connections between the two men. We don’t know how Marcia felt about this, but we do know that her father and Cato jointly betrothed her and that she remarried Cato after Hortensius died. Some Roman husbands were so little troubled by possessive feelings that they joined with a wife’s previous husbands to build a tomb for her after she died. 27
    A husband rarely displayed such open-mindedness about a wife’s sexual behavior while she was married to him, but this had as much to do with fear that she might bear another man’s child as with love-based jealousy. One of the most important functions of marriage for the propertied classes was the production of legitimate children who would honor the father in his old age, show respect to the ancestors and clan gods, and perpetuate the family’s property. A Greek orator in the fourth century B.C. explained: “We have hetaerae [courtesans specially trained to be pleasing companions] for pleasure, concubines for the daily care of our body, but wives to bear us legitimate children and to be the trusted guardians of our household.” Under the Roman Republic, census takers determined if a Roman citizen was single by asking: “Have you married for the purpose of creating children?” 28
    When Greek husbands eulogized their departed wives, they seldom talked of their mutual love or the personal qualities they treasured in their wives. The most common words of praise for a wife were that she showed “self-control,” an attribute connected in Greek thought to female chastity and to a wife’s protection of her husband’s property. Under Athenian law, a man’s seduction of another’s wife was punishable by death, but the rape of another man’s wife merited only a monetary fine. The Athenians reasoned that a rapist did not pose a threat to the husband’s household property because the woman could be counted on to dislike the rapist. But “he who achieves his end by persuasion,” said the legislators, gained