Typical Marriage Rites

The ceremony of Greek marriages consists of many rituals that, to the surface, looks unnecessary, but conveyed a deeper meaning usually to the gods. It was indeed, in every sense of the word, a ceremony. Taken from ancient literature and urn paintings, researchers were able to get a full grasp of exactly how the event was performed. The vases were typically given to the bride and groom as to commemorate the joyous occasion. There were three stages of marriage: the day before, the day of, and the day after. Each day had special meaning and different formalities.

The majority of the preparation happened the day before the marriage ceremony where purification was stressed, especially towards the bride. At the time of the marriage, the groom would be approximately thirty years older to the bride's naive 15. While the male would be sexually experienced, the female almost always was a virgin. Taken place at the bride's home, the rites before her being wed would be a way of saying farewell to her virginity and the era of "girlhood." Hair would be offered to take the place of the bride and her virginal ways, as well as clothing and toys of her childhood. This would help her part ways with her childhood and fully embrace the womanly role that she would be taking on the next day. In addition to those reasons, it would be considered an gratuitous offering to the gods since the bride was finally fulfilling her dreams of taking on a husband. All of these articles would be offered to Artemis, Aphrodite, and Hera, which were the protectors of women. Interestingly enough, in occasional circumstances, the bride would sleep with a boy the night before the marriage, but proof of it is extremely scarce.

The day of the wedding would begin with a bath for the bride, which was believed to encourage fertility. It also served as a purification as the water came from a fresh spring or river. Because the entire process had to be untainted, a child would carry the bathwater. Afterwards, the bride or groom's father would host the infamous wedding feast, which would include the couple, families, and close friends. For the women, this would be the only time where it was socially acceptable to eat with the men. At the end of the banquet in the evening, the woman would be given to the man to symbolize her leaving her familial home. The groom would grasp her wrist as as sign of possession and the procession to the bride's new household would begin. She would ride in a cart, veiled as her mother would walk beside her carrying torches, which emphasized her role as a protector throughout her daughter's life. The music being played and the flames would act against the evil spirits which might be tempted to hurt the bride through this defenseless transition. The other members- though not as important as the mother- were the leader, young boys, the groom's attendant, the bride's attendant, other friends, and then maybe the whole town. As they walked, objects such as sandals and flowers were thrown at them. When they reach the bridal chamber, there reaches an apex, where a cry is raised. It is both interpreted as a sort of triumph, for the bride has been safely transported to her new home and also raises attention to her soon-to-be sacrifice. The mother of the groom would then stand at the door and receive the couple with more rituals and customs. During the night, a friend of the groom would stand guard in front of the door and the bride's friends would sing outside.

Finally, the ceremonies performed the day after the wedding was called the epaulia. Virgins would sing to the couple outside the chamber and men wold return to wake them. There would be a presentation of gifts, which would focused around the bride. An important ritual would separation the groom and bride, while he slept in his parents-in-aw's house with a girl and vice versa. This would stress the new-found status of the woman, that she solely belonged to her husband.

While this form of marriage rites may seem extremely complicated and prolonged, the consistent thread running through the entire event is the fact that the girl is transitioning from the maiden image to that of a woman. However, it is definitely a means of celebration, much like today.

Source: Avagianou, A. (1991). Sacred Marriage in the Rituals of Greek Religion. N.p.: European Academic Publishers.

The End of an Era

 

 

Image credit:  Joey (see references)

Views on sexuality are fluid and ever-changing; however, our semester is concluding and our blog will likely no longer be adding new posts.  We hope that you have enjoyed our research as much as we  have.

From all of the surviving members of Views on Sexuality in the Ancient World,  farewell!

References:

Joey. "Lovemorethanthestars: Day #3: Your Favorite..." And I Railed, and I Raved. Web. 20 Apr. 2011. <http://palaces-and-stormclouds.tumblr.com/post/4078925118/lovemorethanthestars-day-3-your-favorite>.

Sappho: then and now

Many efforts have been made to translate and recreate Sappho's poetry.  "Swinburne constructs a male lesbian body" (Prins 112) which is further defined as "homoerotically inclined masculinity" (Prins 112).  One of his translations is below:

Love's priestess, mad with pain and joy of song,
Song's priestess, mad with joy and pain of love.  (52)

Here, the priestess connects the first and second lines, each with a different but connected identity.

Another scholar, Philips, attempts to preserve the integrity of the original Greek rhythm of Sappho's poetry in her recreations.

My Bosom glow'd; the subtle Flame
Ran quick thro' all my vital Frame;
O'er my dim Eyes a Darkness hung;
My Ears with hollow Murmurs rung.  (45)

Image Credit:  Met (see references)

In fact, Sappho's identity as a representation of the erotic lesbian is so wide spread that the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) carries a painting titled "Sleep" by Gustave Courbet which features two nude female sleeping next to one another and references Sappho in the description.  "Courbet drew upon a range of sources for this image...[including] conventions of contemporary Sapphic literature" (Met).

References:

Prins, Yopie. Victorian Sappho. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1999. Print.

"The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Special Exhibitions: Gustave Courbet." The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Metmuseum.org. Web. 14 Apr. 2011. <http://www.metmuseum.org/special/gustave_courbet/view_1.asp?item=9>.

A Muse by Any Other Name...

When I was introduced to Sappho, her image was condensed to an ancient writer of erotic, lesbian poetry.  Through the text Victorian Sappho, I found that "What we call Sappho was, perhaps, never a woman at all; not the poet we imagine on the island of Lesbos in the seventh century B.C. singing songs to the Sapphic circle, but a fictional persona circulating in archaic Greek lyric and reinvoked throughout antiquity as 'the tenth muse'" (Prins 8).  A statue depicting her by Johann Heinrich von Dannecker (circa 1800) is below (Lewis).

Image credit:  Lewis (see references)

Sappho was and arguably still is the "poster girl" for the identity of women in poetry.  "Sappho of Lesbos became a name with multiple significations in the course of the nineteenth century, as the reconstruction of ancient Greek fragments attributed to Sappho contributed to the construction of Sappho herself as the first woman poet, singing at the origin of a Western lyric tradition" (Prins 3).

She blurred traditional gender distinctions within her poetry, creating erotic manifestations of masculine women and feminine men.  "Thus Sappho is variously invoked to authorize a female poetic tradition, or to embody postmodern fragmentation, or to affirm lesbian identity, but what these readings have in common is a (re)turn to Sappho as an exemplary, engendering figure for the reading of lyric" (7). 

References:

Lewis, Jone Johnson. "Sappho of Lesbos." Women's History - Comprehensive Women's History Research Guide. 2006. Web. 14 Apr. 2011. <http://womenshistory.about.com/od/sappho/ig/Sappho/Sappho-Dannecker.htm>.

Prins, Yopie. Victorian Sappho. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1999. Print.

Reconstructing Gender in Plato's Symposium

 In The Feminine Matrix of Sex and Gender in Classical Athens, Gilhuly builds on David Halperin's argument that Plato constructed his Symposium in a way which crafted "the hierarchy of the feminine, the prostitute, the wife, and the priestess, as an alternate construction to the binary that constrains the sex/gender system" (96-97). She emphasizes his point that this is necessary because:

although heterosexual love was thought to be mutually enjoyable to both partners, it is Halperin who has suggested that it is precisely the power differential imputed to this relationship as projected onto pederasty that Socrates is trying to evade.  That is to say the eromenos is a problematic role for a young man to identify with because it demands that he assume what was conceived as a female and therefore subordinate role in sex.  (89)

 Gilhuly theorizes that Plato wanted to shy away from the dichotomous views of masculine versus feminine in order to justify male, non-heterosexual love for both partners involved.  If it is not a comparison in which one partner  must fulfill the female/subordinate role and one the male/dominant role, then it is possible for both males (whether two adults or one adult and one adolescent) to participate without seeming inferior.  "Plato deploys a model of the feminine in a dialectical relationship with a model of pederasty (both of which have been established in the text), to gesture toward a new kind of erotic identity" (61).  To further distance the situation from potential femininity, the goal is to display "The feminine continuum...as something that one must aspire to transcend.  The lover's goal is to ascend into a realm beyond embodiment" (97).  If two males are in a successful, fulfilling sexual relationship, it is unable to be defined through traditional gender roles.

References:

Gilhuly, Kate. The Feminine Matrix of Sex and Gender in Classical Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Print.

To Be a Virgin or Not to Be a Virgin?

My third primary source is Soranus' Gynecology. This is an ancient text written by Soranus, an ancient Greek gynecologist in the 1st to 2nd century A.D. In this work, Soranus gives details about how he believes the female body works, discussing topics such as menstruation, female reproductive organs, child-birth, virginity, etc.

According to Soranus, a girl could follow two tracks in ancient Greece. She could grow up, reach puberty, get married, and then live her life bearing children and be a sexual object for her husband. Or she could remain a virgin, usually for religious purposes. No way was it acceptable for a girl to be unmarried and have sex. Thus, there were only these two extremes. But which option was better? To be a virgin, or not to be a virgin?

Soranus states that "women usually are married for the sake of children and succession, and not for mere enjoyment." This clearly depicts a woman's role in marriage in ancient society - women did not marry for love or even out of choice, it was just a contract, a duty for them to get married and have children. Not only was it unfair to women that marriage was an unemotional and business-like affair, girls were expected to get married at a young age when "the first appearance of menstruation takes place around the 14th year. This age then is really the natural one indicating the time for defloration." This shows how women were seen as only sexual objects, who were not supposed to have sex for their own pleasure, but to become impregnated and have children as soon as they could.

Then there was the other option for a girl: remaining a virgin. However, there was much debate in ancient society over whether it was healthy for a girl to remain a virgin. One side believed that it was unnatural for a woman to be a virgin and not reproduce. Others thought that being a virgin made woman, and even men, stronger because they were not driven by the desire to have sex because they never knew what the act felt like. Soranus answered the question: "To be a virgin, or not to be a virgin?" by siding with the latter. He believed that it is actually healthier for a girl to be a virgin:

"...permanent virginity is healthy, because intercourse is harmful in itself...among animals we see that those females are stronger which are prevented from having intercourse. And among women we see that those who, on account of regulations and service to the gods, have renounced intercourse and those who have been kept in virginity as ordained by law are less susceptible to disease."

Photo credit: "Soranus"(see sources)

















Sources:
Temkin, Owsei. Soranus' Gynecology. N.p.: John Hopkins University Press, 1991. Print.

"Soranus". Web. 10 Apr. 2011. http://www.es.flinders.edu.au/~mattom/science+society/lectures/illustrations/lecture11/soranus.html

Juvenal's Criticism of the Woman Adulterer

Another one of my primary sources is Satire VI translated as The Ways of Women by Juvenal. Juvenal wrote Satire VI around 100 C.E., a time when women were getting more liberties in marriage. With this change, Juvenal believed that women were abusing there newer freedoms and making divorce, unfaithfulness, greed and extravagance, and other evils more common (Gifford).

I want to focus on how Juvenal criticizes women adulterers. Before and during the time of Juvenal, husbands were allowed to cheat on their wives without any social repercussions. However, once women started getting more freedom and adultery may have become more common amongst females, people like Juvenal started criticizing women and claiming they were wicked beings who were symbols of lust and man's downfall. This emphasizes how celibacy and monogamy were values that were supposed to be instilled into women, not men, in ancient civilization.

In the following excerpt from Satire VI, Juvenal is trying to dissuade Postumus from getting married because a wife is nothing but a potential adulterer. This points out how ancient society believed that women should be celibate and monogamous:

'Tis, my good friend, no modern vice, to slight
The sacred Genius of the nuptial rite,
And climb another's couch: all other crimes
Were the sad offspring of the iron times,
All but adultery: that, and that alone,
E-en in the silver age too well was known.
Yet thou, it seems, art labouring to engage
Thy witless neck, in this degenerate age! (Gifford)

In another excerpt, Juvenal describes women as beings who can not be caged or tamed. He describes them as "crafty" beings who will cheat on their husbands no matter what. The disgusted tone with which he talks about these adulterous females reveals how society looked down upon married women who were promiscuous:

I hear, old friends, I hear you: "make all sure,
Plant spies within, and bolts without the door."
But who shall KEEP the KEEPERS? Wives contemn
Our poor precautions, and begin with THEM.
Lust is the master-passion; it inflames
Alike both high and low; alike the dames
Who, on tall Syrians' necks, their state display,
And those who pick on foot their miry way. (Gifford)

This is an illustration for Satire VI. It depicts a woman seducing the men beside her. Photo credit: Hollar(see sources)















Sources:
Gifford, William. The Satires of Decimus Juvenis Juvenalis. London: W. Bulmer and Co., 1802. Satire VI. Print.

Hollar, Wenzel. "Who Watches the Watchers?" in Juvenal's Satire VI. Web. 10 Apr. 2011. http://www.suite101.com/view_image_articles.cfm/1063392