Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/99

 FAMILY REL.A HONS. 83 In regard to marriage, we find the wife occupying a station of great dignity and influence, though it was the practice for the husband to purchase her by valuable presents to her parents, a practice extensively prevalent among early communities, and treated by Aristotle as an evidence of barbarism. She even seems to live less secluded and to enjoy a wider sphere of action than was allotted to her in historical Greece. 1 Concubines are frequent with the chiefs, and occasionally the jealousy of the wife breaks out in reckless excess against her husband, as may be seen in the tragical history of Phoenix. The continence of La- ertes, from fear of displeasing his wife Antikleia, is especially noticed. 2 A large portion of the romantic interest which Grecian legend inspires is derived from the women : Penelope, Androma- 1 Aristot. Polit. ii. 5, 11. The 6va, or present given by the suitor to the father, as an inducement to grant his daughter in marriage, are spoken of as very valuable, ('nrepeiaia tSva (II. xi. 244; xvi. 178 ; xxii. 472) : to grant a daughter without e&va was a high compliment to the intended son-in-law (II. ix. 141 : compare xiii. 366). Among the ancient Germans of Tacitus, the husband gave presents, not to his wile's father, but to herself (Tacit. Germ. c. 18): the customs of the early Jews were in this respect completely Homeric; see the case of Shechem and Dinah (Genesis, xxxiv. 12) and others, etc. ; also Mr. Catlin's Letters on the North American Indians, vol L Lett. 26, p. 213. The Greek edva correspond exactly to the mundium of the Lombard and Alemannic laws, which is thus explained by Mr. Price (Notes on the Laws of King Ethelbert, in the Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, translated and published by Mr. Thorpe, vol. i. p. 20) : " The Longobardic law is the most copious of all the barbaric codes in its provisions respecting marriage, and particularly so on the subject of the Mund. From that law it appears that the Mundium was a sum paid over to the family of the bride, for trans- ferring the tutelage which they possessed over her to the family of the hus- band: ' Si quis pro muliere libera aut puella mundium dederit et ei tradita fucrit ad uxorem,' etc. (ed. Rotharis, c. 183.) In the same sense in which the term occurs in these dooms, it is also to be met with in* the Alemannic law: it was also common in Denmark and in Sweden, where the bride was called a mund-bought or a mund-given woman." According to the 77jh Law of King Ethelbert (p. 23), this mund was often paid in cattle : the Saxon daughters were -xapdevoL tiXipeoipoiai (Iliad, xviii. 59.3). capp. 17 and 18. Polygamy appears to be ascribed to Priam, but to no one else (Iliad, xxi. ?). "
 * Odyss. i. 430 : Iliad, ix. 450 : sec also Terpstra, Antiquitas Ilomerica,