Note 253 — Chapter VII · ToC

To give a few examples, Plutarch mentions that the relations between husband and wife in Sparta were at first secret (Plutarch, Lycurgas). The story told by Pausanias about Ulysses' marriage points to the custom of the husband going to live with his wife's family (Pausanias, III. 20 (10), Frazer's translation). The legend of the establishment of monogamy by Cecrops, because, before his time, "men had their wives in common and did not know their fathers," points clearly to a confused tradition of a period of mother-descent. (Athenæus, XIII. 2). Herodotus reports that mother-descent was practised by the Lycians, and states that "if a free woman marry a man who is a slave their children are free citizens; but if a free man marry a foreign woman or cohabit with a concubine, even though he be the first person in the state, the children forfeit all rights of citizenship" (Herodotus, Bk. I. 173). The wife of Intaphernes, when granted by Darius permission to claim the life of a single man of her kindred, chose her brother, saying that both husband and brother and children could be replaced (Herodotus, Bk. III. 119). Similarly the declaration of Antigone in Sophocles (line 905 ff) that neither for husband nor children would she have performed the toil she undertook for Polynices clearly shows that the tie of the common womb was held as closer than the tie of marriage.