The Greeks and Romans

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.

In other Greek states women enjoyed more freedom than in Athens. The graceful, close-cropped Spartan girls moved among the men, vying with them in athletics. If Plutarch is to be believed, Lycurgus, the half-legendary law-giver of Sparta, sought deliberately to rob the female sex of its 'excessive tenderness' and womanishness, ‘the consequence of a recluse life'. To this end he accustomed the virgins occasionally to be seen naked as well as the young men and to dance and sing in their presence on certain festivals. 'As for the virgins appearing naked there was nothing disgraceful in it, because everything conducted with modesty and without one indecent word or action. Nay, it caused a simplicity of manners and an emulation for the best habit of body. Plutarch hints that the custom served as a stimulus to marriage. A Spartan bridegroom was expected to carry off his bride by violence. She was then taken in hand by a bridesmaid, dressed in man's clothes (to baffle evil spirits?) and deposited in a dark room where the bridegroom paid her short, stealthy-and strictly sober-visits, afterwards sleeping with the young men. Some bridegrooms, says the unreliable Plutarch, 'even had children before they had an interview with their wives in the day-time'. This, too, was courtship, of a sort.

In the patriarchal Rome of the Republic women were in no sense prisoners of the home. They went to public entertainments and took part in social life. There were three forms of marriage, all of which gave the husband life-and-death power over his wife. Like the Greeks, Roman husbands treated their wives with courtesy and kindness (if it was merited), but saw no necessity to be 'faithful' to them. The Roman male did not feel guilt in carnality; that was to come with Christianity. Though prostitutes were despised, an unmarried young man could not be expected to be entirely celibate. The problem resolved itself into simple terms. There was affection; that was for wives. There was lust; that was for slaves and prostitutes, according to taste and circumstances. Love, in the sense of a transcending passion, was rare. It was a mania, the kind of folly that consumed overheated poets, and was sometimes fatal in its consequences. It waxed, as love is doomed to wax, on frustration, and when it did occur it was likely to occur in adultery, which was a capital offence (though not a rare one).
In the spiritual degeneration of Rome, after the Punic Wars, husbands surrendered their old authority, and wayward matrons (as Juvenal testifies) began to squander their wealth on gladiators, astrologers and abortionists. Marriage became no more than a reciprocal engagement entered into by a couple, with the casually given consent of their parents; and many of these unions were broken as lightly as they were contracted.