UNLOCKING ANCIENT ATHENS

​​Hello, my fellow gossipers, and welcome or welcome back to the Agora Gossip podcast. I’m your host, Freya, a lover of the classical world and all it has to offer. If you want to know about the world of ancient Athens, then you are precisely in the right place. From your marriages to your meals and your education to your occupations, I will tell you everything you need to know about the place the Athenians called home. Are you ready to take a deep dive into what life was like thousands of years ago? I hope so, because there is a lot to cover…

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Welcome back to episode two, everyone! Today’s episode is all about ancient Athenian marriage. We are going to be looking at what constituted a marriage, the social and political gains people could achieve from them, and answering the main question: why did people get married?

 

So, if you want to know about the crazy world of love in ancient Athens, then keep on listening.

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When we think of marriage, we typically think of two people getting married because they love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together. For example, think Romeo and Juliet, one of the most obvious examples of two individuals falling in love and getting married despite their families' disapproval. Ancient Athenian marriage was less romantic…by quite a bit…at base level, yes, it did consist of two people getting married, but love was fairly low down on the list of reasons why it happened. In fact, was love even a motivation for marriage at all?

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​In ancient Athens, marriage was incredibly important because it was the core of a household. Households were essential because they helped to develop Athenian society. Marriage basically acted as the link between the household and society. You might think that because marriage was so important to Athenians, there must have been all these legalities couples had to follow, but actually, this is the opposite. There was no legal acknowledgement of marriage, which Aristotle writes about in his work Politics…he writes that ‘there is no exact term denoting the relation uniting wife and husband’. Athenian marriages were not recognised through a singular event; it was a succession of events that were witnessed by multiple people, which then, over time, led to a marriage being labelled as legitimate.  

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Age 

​Now, before we get into the details of ancient Athenian marriage, there is one striking aspect we should cover: the age that people were married. Athenian girls were typically fifteen years old or younger when they got married. That’s pretty young compared to the ages we’re used to today! And if you thought their husbands were of a similar age…well, just hold that thought. The husbands were usually around thirty years old or even older. As a modern audience, we might think that’s really strange and maybe even predatory, but unfortunately, that was just the norm in ancient Athenian society.

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Betrothal ​

The first step in consolidating an ancient Athenian marriage was the betrothal, also known as the engye. This was when the father of the bride gave his daughter to her future husband. It was viewed as a promise between the bride’s father and her new husband, a promise that was often made without her consent and also without her physically being there!

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The engye was typically the time when the bride’s father gave her new husband the dowry. Doweries were usually a gift of money, but in more materialistic cases, it could have consisted of furniture, jewels, and sometimes even land. However, regardless of what form it took, it all had the same purpose. It was set aside by the bride’s father to give to her new husband to use to manage his wife’s needs whilst they were married. But, if husband and wife decided to get divorced and they hadn’t had any children together, he was required to return the dowry back to her family.

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The dowry was essentially a form of enticement…a price tag, if you will, placed on the bride. It was the father of the bride’s way of tempting a man to marry his daughter. Doweries proved to be highly beneficial for everyone, but particularly the father of the bride and her future husband. Athenian fathers used the dowry as an opportunity to display their wealth to the wider community. The bigger the dowry, the wealthier the family, and a wealthy family made the prospective bride all that more attractive.

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Doweries were likely to be the biggest amount of money that a man would have received at one time. This presumably would have been a very attractive venture for a future husband, as he wouldn’t have had to physically work for this large sum of money; it would have just been given to him. Marrying into wealth was also enticing because it might have meant the new husband’s social standing would have increased. It was hoped that a large dowry would have attracted an equally wealthy husband, which then would have formed a more secure union, hopefully lessening the chances of a future divorce. As Demosthenes writes in his work Against Leptines ‘for in private life each of us tries to find who is wealthy, say, to marry into our family’. Presumably, if the daughter married someone who didn’t have a good reputation or was below her family’s social standing, it would have brought some form of shame to her and her family. Therefore, to combat this risk, Athenian fathers strived to provide extensive dowries. We’re starting to see that love wasn’t really a factor in Athenian marriages; everyone seemed to be more concerned about securing the wealthiest husband.

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One of the most important aspects of marriage was the social and political alliances formed by the joining of two households. To have two wealthy or politically influential families join together through the union of their children, they would have been unstoppable. For example, Kimon, an Athenian statesman and General, married a girl called Isodike, who was a member of the Alkmaionid family. They were a very wealthy and prominent family in ancient Athens, and therefore joining these two families would have further boosted their places in the social hierarchy and strengthened their political alliances. Putting it into a more modern context, think about our modern-day power couples…Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Beyonce and Jay-Z, Victoria and David Beckham. Individually, they were all wealthy before they got married, and then getting married to someone on a similar financial level just made them even richer.

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Doweries were not a legal necessity, but it was customary for fathers to provide their daughters with one. Ancient historian Cheryl Cox argues that they were more of a social obligation than anything. Presumably, with what we have already discussed, not providing your daughter with a good dowry would have been slightly embarrassing for the family. But there are examples of men marrying women who didn’t have a dowry. Callias, a very rich Athenian statesman, married Elpinice, who was a member of the Philaide family, another extremely wealthy family in Athens. But Elpinice didn’t have a dowry. Callias knew he wouldn’t receive anything physically financial for marrying her, but because she was from such a rich family, he knew this was still an opportunity for two families to join together to form a marital alliance.

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So, with such an emphasis on doweries, I feel like we have to ask the question…were they provided by only wealthy families? Well, some ancient historians, such as Sarah Pomero,y suggest that wealthy families paid the dowry for their relatives if they were not financially stable enough. She also argues that according to Athenian law, doweries were provided for poorer girls who were moderately attractive. This is demonstrated in the statesman Demosthenes’ work Against Neaera, he states, ‘even if a girl be poor, the law provides for her an adequate dowry’. This goes to show just how important marriage was in ancient Athenian society. It was imperative for girls to be married, clearly regardless of their family's wealth or place in the social hierarchy.

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Procreation ​

Arguably, the key purpose of ancient Athenian marriage was the production of legitimate children. This was for two main reasons. Number one…after their father had passed away, they would have been able to inherit their properties and businesses and continue the family lineage. And number two, only legitimate children were able to participate in the polis.

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Both of these reasons meant that wives faced a lot of pressure to have legitimate children. Demosthenes even writes that the purpose of wives was to provide their husbands with ‘legitimate children and to be faithful guardians of our household’.

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So, what do I mean by legitimate children? Well, this was all down to a law imposed by Pericles in 451 BC. He proposed that Athenian citizenship should only be given to children who had two Athenian parents, and it was accepted in the typical Athenian way, by a vote. Although this law didn’t stop Athenian citizens from marrying foreigners, it did directly impact those who were already married to foreign partners. Any children created from their marriage would not have Athenian citizenship, nor would they have a right to inherit from the state. So basically, non-legitimate children weren’t allowed to partake in any activities in the polis. This then placed pressure on families, especially wives, to have legitimate children because, in order for Athenian society to flourish, you needed people to work. All of this just goes to show how significant children were to Athenian marriage. It wasn’t about creating a happy and healthy household. It was more so about ensuring the continuation of Athens as a city-state.

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And, I think that answers our earlier question…Why did people get married in ancient Athens? Well, it most likely wasn’t for love, that’s for sure!

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So that concludes the second episode of Agora Gossip! I hope you enjoyed learning about the rather complicated world of ancient Athenian marriage. I had so much fun researching this topic. There are, unfortunately, some things I didn’t get to cover in today’s episode; if I did, we would have probably been here for ages! So, if you would like to hear a bit more about the actual wedding rituals, then please get in touch and let me know!

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​See you next time my fellow gossipers!