Cave-man to Ovid
CARTOONISTS never tire of drawing pictures of cavemen dragging captive women across the countryside by the hair. One of the brighter variations on this theme showed two gossiping cavewomen looking on at the brutal abduction of a third. Said one to the other: 'I can't think what she sees in him'.
Whether Stone Age women artfully set out to be dubbed and captured by males whose prowess impressed them, or whether men trapped them like animals and flogged them into a state of domesticity, is a free if profitless field for conjecture. It is possible that neither of these things happened.
The modern theory is that marriage by capture-supposedly the first form of wooing-rarely occurred outside of war; that any rough handling of the female was an essential sop to her maiden modesty. That knowledgeable historian of marriage, Edward Westermarck, thinks that if marriage by capture ever occurred it must have been at a stage of social growth before the idea of barter had presented itself. 'It is impossible to believe', he says, 'that there ever was a time when friendly negotiations between families who could intermarry were altogether unknown.' Or perhaps, he suggests, men found it easier to pay compensation to the woman's relatives beforehand, rather than kidnap her first and then try to buy off their vengeance afterwards. Hence 'marriage by purchase'.
Patriarchal Man could as ill afford to lose his womenfolk as his beasts. If young men wanted his daughters as brides they had to pay the market price, if necessary on easy terms, or in the shape of physical labour. But some tribes scorned to traffic in daughters; the bride's parents offered gift for gift, or handed back the purchase price in the form of a dowry, for the daughter's protection. The dowry system was firmly established in Babylon, Greece and Rome.
This does not mean that impassioned-even romantic-love between man and woman found no scope amid the matrimonial bargainings of the ancient world. The Old Testament's Song of Songs still mocks those who have tried to explain it away as allegory. Regretfully, down the centuries, the scholars have been forced back on the view that the Song may be what it seems to be-a sensuously phrased love song. 'O that his left hand were under my head, and that his right hand embraced me.. . . My beloved put his hand to the latch and my heart was thrilled within me.. .. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. .. .' The Song of Songs may not be an expression of romantic love in its strictest sense, but it is a useful reminder that even among the ancients, on the rare occasions when passion got half a chance it could express itself as powerfully and certainly as eloquently as when it agitated the breast of Romantic Man.
To say that courting couples-as we know them-were unknown in the streets of Plato's Athens would be a rash statement; but nearly all the evidence suggests that women were relegated, with varying degrees of firmness, to the domestic background. Unmarried girls were kept secluded in the women's quarters of the house, though now and then they contrived to spy on the outer world from upper windows and roofs. Periodically they were allowed to attend festivals, suitably escorted. They met no young men, and therefore had scant opportunity of falling in love. Each knew that, in due time, she could expect to find herself married to an experienced, probably courteous, but often reluctant citizen of twice her age and four times her wisdom. She did not have to worry about finding this husband, or whether she was really in love with him or not. The whole thing was out of her hands, and not knowing any other system she did not criticize it. Negotiations were often conducted by a woman match-maker, instructed either by the bride's father (anxious to get a daughter off his hands) or by the future husband (yielding, under social pressure, to the need for providing himself with an heir). He might be indifferent to the appearance of his bride, and deem it superfluous for her to attend the formal betrothal. Athenian men put off the tiresome burden of marriage as long as they decently could, vastly preferring public life to domestic. The duty of wives, as they saw it, was dear and simple-to perpetuate the race. Since this was a sacred trust, it must obviously be a full-time job, leaving women no time for gadding about. Aristotle thought a wife ought to be more obedient even than a slave. 'The best reputation a woman can have said Pericles, 'is not to be spoken of among men either for good or evil.' No doubt there were husbands who 'courted' their young brides on taking delivery of them, and who through the ups-and-downs of marriage never ceased to feel a sincere affection for their contracted partners. But between domestic affection and an all-kindling passion there was an untraversed gulf. The love which the leading Athenian philosophers praised, and which they struggled so hard to define, was homosexual, as is made abundantly clear in Plato's Symposium.
According to Shelley, the eyes of Greek women 'could not have been deep and intricate from the workings of the mind and could have entangled no heart in soul-woven labyrinths'. In fashionable Athens such demand as existed for feminine fascination was supplied, not by wives, but by courtesans. Though female unchastity was condemned, it was overlooked in the hetairae, those cultivated, witty and stimulating women who beguiled the leisure of politicians and men of letters. The more fashionable among them amassed considerable wealth; Phryne offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes, provided they could be inscribed 'Destroyed by Alexander, rebuilt by Phryne the courtesan'. The form of companionship the hetairae offered was considered to be unattainable in domesticity. The courtesan sold, not merely her body, but her charm, culture and personality, and was astute enough to ration all these commodities, thus simultaneously increasing the demand and forcing up the price. She knew that man's ardour waxed on deprivation. If he wanted something badly he had to learn to plead for it, as well as pay for it. By this simple policy of 'playing hard to get', successful courtesans were able to inspire their more susceptible admirers to a fine frenzy, to drive them to poetry, self-injury and threats of suicide. This supplication to the hetairae was, then, an early manifestation of courtship-in so far as man was reduced to asking for something, instead of taking it.
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