DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.13851#0636
60U of the miscellany customs of greece,
much that they frequently had children hy their wives before they saw
their faces by day-light. The interview being thus difficult and rare,
served not only for a continual exercise of their temperance, and fur-
thered very much the ends and intentions of marriage, but was a means
to keep their passion still alive, which flags, and decays, and dies at last,
by too easy access and long continuance with the beloved object.'
CHAP. XI.
of their divorces, adulteries, concubines, and harlots.
The Grecian laws concerning divorces were different : some per-
mitted men to put away their wives on slight occasions : the Cretans
allowed it to any man that was afraid of having too great a number ot
children ; the Athenians likewise did it upon very small grounds, but
not without giving a bill, wherein was contained the reasen of their
divorce to be approved (if the party divorced made an appeal) by the
chief magistrate (1). The Spartans, though marrying without much
nicety in choice, seldom divorced their wives ; for we read tha„ Lysan-
der was fined by the magistrate called ephori, on that account : and
though Aristo, one of their kings, put away his wife with the approba-
tion of the city, yet that seems to have been done rather out of an ear-
nest desire to have a son to succeed in his kingdom, which he could not
expect by that woman, than according to the custom of his country (2).
But whatever liberty the men took, their wives were under a greater
restraint ; for it was extremely scandalous for a woman to depart from
her husband : hence we find Medea in Euripides (3) complaining of the
hard fate of her sex, who had no remedy against the men's unkindness,
but were first under the necessity of buying their husbands with large
portions, and then to submit to their ill-usage without hopes of redress :
the Athenians were somewhat more favourable to women, allowing them to
leave their husbands upon just occasions ; only they could not do it with-
out making appeal to the archon, and presenting him a bill of their grie-
vances with their own hands. Plutarch (4) has a story of Hipparete,
Alcibiades's wife, ' who (he tells us) was a virtuous lady, and fond of
her husband, but at last growiug impatient of the injuries done to her bed by
bis continual entertaining of courtezans, as well strangers as Athenians,
she departed from him, and retired to her brother Calias's house. AI-
cibiades seemed not at all concerned at it, living on still his former lewd
course of life ; but the law requiring that she should deliver to the ar-
chon in person, and not by a proxy, the instrument whereby she sued for
a divorce, when, in obedience to it, she presented herself before him,
Alcibiades came in, took her away by force, and carried her home through
the forum, no man daring to oppose him, or take her from him, and she
continued with him till her death. Nor was this violence to be thought
a crime ; for the law, in making her who desires a divorce ap-
pear in public, seems to design her husband should have an opportunity
(1) Genial. Dier. lib. iv. cap. 8 (3) Medea, v. 230
(2) Herodotus, lib. vi. cap. 53,
much that they frequently had children hy their wives before they saw
their faces by day-light. The interview being thus difficult and rare,
served not only for a continual exercise of their temperance, and fur-
thered very much the ends and intentions of marriage, but was a means
to keep their passion still alive, which flags, and decays, and dies at last,
by too easy access and long continuance with the beloved object.'
CHAP. XI.
of their divorces, adulteries, concubines, and harlots.
The Grecian laws concerning divorces were different : some per-
mitted men to put away their wives on slight occasions : the Cretans
allowed it to any man that was afraid of having too great a number ot
children ; the Athenians likewise did it upon very small grounds, but
not without giving a bill, wherein was contained the reasen of their
divorce to be approved (if the party divorced made an appeal) by the
chief magistrate (1). The Spartans, though marrying without much
nicety in choice, seldom divorced their wives ; for we read tha„ Lysan-
der was fined by the magistrate called ephori, on that account : and
though Aristo, one of their kings, put away his wife with the approba-
tion of the city, yet that seems to have been done rather out of an ear-
nest desire to have a son to succeed in his kingdom, which he could not
expect by that woman, than according to the custom of his country (2).
But whatever liberty the men took, their wives were under a greater
restraint ; for it was extremely scandalous for a woman to depart from
her husband : hence we find Medea in Euripides (3) complaining of the
hard fate of her sex, who had no remedy against the men's unkindness,
but were first under the necessity of buying their husbands with large
portions, and then to submit to their ill-usage without hopes of redress :
the Athenians were somewhat more favourable to women, allowing them to
leave their husbands upon just occasions ; only they could not do it with-
out making appeal to the archon, and presenting him a bill of their grie-
vances with their own hands. Plutarch (4) has a story of Hipparete,
Alcibiades's wife, ' who (he tells us) was a virtuous lady, and fond of
her husband, but at last growiug impatient of the injuries done to her bed by
bis continual entertaining of courtezans, as well strangers as Athenians,
she departed from him, and retired to her brother Calias's house. AI-
cibiades seemed not at all concerned at it, living on still his former lewd
course of life ; but the law requiring that she should deliver to the ar-
chon in person, and not by a proxy, the instrument whereby she sued for
a divorce, when, in obedience to it, she presented herself before him,
Alcibiades came in, took her away by force, and carried her home through
the forum, no man daring to oppose him, or take her from him, and she
continued with him till her death. Nor was this violence to be thought
a crime ; for the law, in making her who desires a divorce ap-
pear in public, seems to design her husband should have an opportunity
(1) Genial. Dier. lib. iv. cap. 8 (3) Medea, v. 230
(2) Herodotus, lib. vi. cap. 53,