Marriage, a History (62 page)

42
Harry Willekens, “Is Contemporary Western Family Law Historically Unique?,”
Journal of Family History
28 (2003).

1
For information on Mari, see Jean-Jacques Glassner, “From Sumer to Babylon,” in André Burguière et al.,
Distant Worlds, Ancient Worlds
(see chap. 1, n. 11); B. F. Batto,
Studies on Woman at Mari
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974); Stephanie Dalley,
Mari and Karana
(Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2002). For other examples of marriage politics in the ancient Middle East, see William Hallo and William Simpson,
The Ancient Near East: A History
(New York: Harcourt College Publishers, 1998), p. 33; Annie Forgeau, “The Pharaonic Order,” in Burguière et al.,
Distant Worlds, Ancient Worlds,
p. 132;
Letters from Mesopotamia: Official, Business, and Private Letters on Clay Tablets from Two Millennia,
trans. and with an introduction by A. Leo Oppenheim (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967).

2
The quotation is from Dalley,
Mari and Karana,
pp. 108-09.

3
For this and the next paragraph, see Anne Kinney, “Women in Ancient China,” in Vivante,
Women’s Roles in Ancient Civilizations,
p. 25 (see chap. 3, n. 35).

4
Retha Warnicke,
The Marrying of Anne of Cleves: Royal Protocol in Early Modern England
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 3-4.

5
Letters from Mesopotamia,
p. 120. For an account of how the Incas used the same techniques in Peru many centuries later, see Irene Silverblatt,
Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Susan Niles, “Women in the Ancient Andes,” in Vivante, ed.,
Women’s Roles,
pp. 323-26.

6
Barbara Watterson,
Women in Ancient Egypt
(see chap. 1, n. 17).

7
Gay Robins,
Women in Ancient Egypt
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 34-35.

8
Kristian Kristiansen and Michael Rowlands,
Social Transformations in Archaeology: Global and Local Perspectives
(New York: Routledge, 1998); Daniel Ogden,
Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death: The Hellenistic Dynasties
(London: Duckworth Press, 1999).

9
Beverly Bossler,
Powerful Relations: Kinship, Status, and the State in Sung China (960-1279)
(Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University Press, 1998).

10
Melvin Thatcher, “Marriages of the Ruling Elite in the Spring and Autumn Period,” in Rubie Watson and Patricia Buckley Ebrey,
Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 66-67.

11
Watterson,
Women in Ancient Egypt.

12
Thatcher, “Marriages of the Ruling Elite in the Spring and Autumn Period.”

13
Jacques Soustelle,
Daily Life of the Aztecs on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest
(Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1961), p 183.

14
Lerner,
Creation of Patriarchy
(see chap. 3, n. 31), p. 113; Watterson,
Women in Ancient Egypt,
p. 157; Soustelle,
Daily Life of the Aztecs,
pp. 65 and note 59, p. 264.

15
For this and the next two paragraphs, see Watterson,
Women in Ancient Egypt
, p. 151; Robins,
Women in Ancient Egypt,
p. 32; Glassner, “From Sumer to Babylon”; Forgeau, “The Pharaonic Order”; Elizabeth Carney, “The Reappearance of Royal Sibling Marriage in Ptolemaic Egypt,”
La Parola del Passato
237 (1987).

16
Rubie Watson, “Marriage and Gender Inequality,” in Watson and Ebrey, eds.,
Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society.

17
Robins,
Women in Ancient Egypt.

18
Ogden,
Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death.

19
Ibid.

20
Sarah Pomeroy,
Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity
(New York: Schocken, 1975).

21
Plutarch, “Life of Marcus Antonius,” in William Shakespeare,
Antony and Cleopatra
(New York: New American Library, 1964), p. 195.

22
The material in this and the following paragraphs is based on Pomeroy,
Goddesses, Whores;
Ogden,
Polygamy;
J. P. V. D. Balsdon,
Roman Women: Their History and Habits
(New York: John Day Co., 1963); Susan Treggiari,
Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian
(Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1991).

23
Jo Ann McNamara, “Matres Patriae/Matres Ecclesiae: Women of Rome,” in Renate Bridenthal, Susan Stuard, and Merry Wiesner, eds.,
Becoming Visible
(see chap. 3, n. 39).

24
Ivan Morris,
The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964).

25
Patricia Tsurimi, “Japan’s Early Female Emperors,”
Historical Reflections
8 (1981).

26
Giulia Sissa, “The Family in Ancient Athens,” in Burguière,
Distant Worlds, Ancient Worlds;
Pomeroy,
Goddesses, Whores.

27
Yan Thomas, “Fathers as Citizens of Rome,” in Burguière et al.,
Distant Worlds, Ancient Worlds;
Treggiari,
Roman Marriage.

28
Marilyn Katz, “Daughters of Demeter: Women in Ancient Greece,” in Bridenthal, Stuard, and Wiesner, eds.,
Becoming Visible,
p. 65; Dixon,
The Roman Family,
p. 67 (see chap. 1, n. 16).

29
Bruce Thornton,
Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997), pp. 167-68; W. K. Lacey,
The Family in Classical Greece
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1968) p. 115.

30
Elaine Fantham et al.,
Women in the Classical World: Image and Text
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 123; Lacey,
The Family in Classical Greece,
pp. 71-72.

31
Forgeau, “The Pharaonic Order.”

32
Susan Niles, “Women in the Ancient Andes,” in Vivante, ed.,
Women’s Roles;
Gailey,
Kinship to Kingship
(see chap. 3, n. 28); Johnson and Earle,
Evolution of Human Societies
(see chap. 3, n. 10). Slaves, however, were frequently forbidden to marry. Marc Van de Mierop, “Women in the Economy of Sumer,” in Barbara Lesko, ed.,
Women’s Earliest Records from Ancient Egypt and Western Asia
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989); Lerner,
The Creation of Patriarchy;
Rita Wright, “Technology, Gender and Class: Worlds of Difference in Ur III Mesopotamia,” in Wright, ed.,
Gender and Archaeology
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996).

33
Judith Evans Grubbs, “ ‘Marriage More Shameful than Adultery’: Slave-Mistress Relationships, ‘Mixed Marriages,’ and Late Roman Law,”
Phoenix
XLVII (1993), p. 125; Pomeroy,
Goddesses, Whores,
pp. 193-95; Dixon,
Roman Family,
pp. 92, 124; Jo Ann McNamara, “Matres Patriae/Matres Ecclesiae: Women of Rome,” in Bridenthal, Stuard, and Wiesner, eds.,
Becoming Visible,
p. 88.

34
David Cherry, ed.,
The Roman World: A Sourcebook
(Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2001), pp. 70-78.

1
My sources for the discussion of Greece, unless otherwise noted, include Sarah Pomeroy,
Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); Lacey,
Family in Classical Greece;
Katz, “Daughters of Demeter” (see chap. 4, n. 28); Marilyn Arthur, “ ‘Liberated’ Women: The Classical Era,” in Bridenthal et al., eds.,
Becoming Visible
(see chap. 3, n. 39); Victor Ehrenberg,
The Greek State
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1964); M. T. W. Arnheim,
Aristocracy in Greek Society
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1977); Chester Starr,
The Economic and Social Growth of Early Greece, 800-500 B.C.
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1977); Gustave Glotz,
The Greek City and Its Institutions
(New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969); Victor Ehrenberg,
The People of Aristophanes
(New York: Schocken, 1962); Pomeroy,
Goddesses, Whores
(see chap. 4, n. 20); Giula Sissa, “The Family in Ancient Athens,” in Burguière et al.,
Distant Worlds, Ancient Worlds
(see chap. 1, n. 11); Cynthia Patterson,
The Family in Greek History
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998); Cheryl Anne Cox,
Household Interests: Property, Marriage Strategies, and Family Dynamics in Ancient Athens
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).

2
Aeschylus,
The Oresteian Trilogy,
trans. Philip Vellacott (London: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 47. The quotes in the next few paragraphs come from pp. 50, 147, 168, 169, and 176 respectively. For a somewhat different reading of the play, but one that I believe complements my analysis, Cynthia Patterson,
Family in Greek History.

3
Katz, “Daughters of Demeter”; Thornton,
Eros
(see chap. 4, n. 29).

4
Eva Cantarella,
Pandora’s Daughters: The Role and Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), p. 46; Fantham et al.,
Women in the Classical World
(see chap. 4, n. 30).

5
Thornton,
Eros.

6
Cantarella,
Pandora’s Daughters.

7
For the first argument, see Arthur, “Liberated Women,” p. 79. For the second, see Pomeroy,
Goddesses, Whores,
pp. 179-85. See also Peter Stearns,
Gender in World History
(New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 15.

8
Unless otherwise noted, the information about Roman marriage comes primarily from Dixon,
The Roman Family
(see chap. 1, n. 16); Treggiari,
Roman Marriage
(see chap. 4, n. 22).

9
Mary Lefkowitz and Maureen Fant,
Women’s Lives in Greece & Rome: A Source Book in Translation
(London: Duckworth Press, 1992), p. 187.

10
K. R. Bradley,
Discovering the Roman Family: Studies in Roman Social History
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Dixon,
Roman Family;
Treggiari,
Roman Marriage;
David Herlihy,
Medieval Households
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985).

11
Ulpian’s
Rules,
excerpted in Emilie Ant, ed.,
Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook
(New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 34.

12
Treggiari,
Roman Marriage,
p. 54.

13
David Cherry, ed.,
The Roman World: A Sourcebook
(Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2001), p. 55.

14
Ibid., p. 53.

15
Lefkowitz and Fant,
Women’s Life,
p. 112; Dixon,
Roman Family,
p. 51; Treggiari,
Roman Marriage,
pp. 441-65.

16
Philip Reynolds,
Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianization of Marriage During the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994).

17
In addition to Dixon and Treggiari, see A. S. Gatwick, “Free or Not So Free? Wives and Daughters in the Late Roman Republic,” in Elizabeth Craik, ed.,
Marriage and Property
(Aberdeen, U.K.: Aberdeen University Press, 1984).

18
Ibid.; Jo-Marie Claassen, “Documents of a Crumbling Marriage: The Case of Cicero and Terentia,”
Phoenix
50 (1996); Judith Evans Grubbs, “ ‘Pagan’ and ‘Christian’ Marriage,”
Journal of Early Christian Studies
2 (1994).

19
Lefkowitz and Fant,
Women’s Life,
pp. 164-65. See also Judith Hallett,
Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). Studies of connubial epitaphs show that Roman husbands’ description of their departed wives were much more individualized than Greeks’, recording specific endearing qualities rather the conventional phrases. R. B. Lattimore,
Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1942).

20
Quoted in Craig Williams,
Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 52.

21
For this and the following paragraphs, see Gordon Williams, “Representations of Roman Women in Literature,” in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds.,
I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome
(New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1996), p. 133; Donna Hurley, “Livia (Wife of Augustus),” in Online Encyclopedia of Roman Emperors,
www.romanemperors.org/livia.htm#N_2
.(1999). Accessed April 25, 2002.

22
Suetonius Tranquillus,
Lives of the Caesars,
Book III,
Tiberius,
VII:2, trans. J. C. Rolfe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964-65), pp. 302-03; Treggiari,
Roman Marriage,
p. 47.

23
The Augustan legislation discussed here and in the following paragraphs is described in detail in Treggiari,
Roman Marriage,
and Dixon,
Roman Family.
See also Will Durant,
Caesar and Christ
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944).

24
Grubbs, “ ‘Pagan’ and ‘Christian’ Marriage.”

25
Treggiari,
Roman Marriage.

26
Durant,
Caesar and Christ,
p. 230 and note 40, p. 686.