Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/61

 CHAP. II. MARRIAGE. 55 time of the Antonines, but Avho Avas well instructed in the ancient usages of his language, says, that in ancient times, instead of designating marriage by its particular name, ■,'<!iuo;, they designated it simply by the word riloz, which signifies sacred ceremony,' as if marriage had been, in those ancient times, the ceremony sacred above all others. Now, the religion that created marriage was not that of Jupiter, of Juno, or of the other gods of Olympus. The ceremony did not take place in a temple; it was performed in a house, and the domestic god presided. When the religion of the gods of the sky became pre- ponderant, men could not help invoking them also in the prayers of marriage, it is true; it even became habitual to go to the temple before the marriage, and offer sacrifices to these gods. These sacrifices were called the preludes of marriage ; ^ but the principal and essential part of the ceremony always took place before the domestic hearth. Among the Greeks the marriage ceremony consisted, eo to speak, of three acts. The first took place before the hearth of the father, ^-/-/lj/ct/c ; the third before the hearth of the husband, rilo; ; the second was the passage from the one to the other, 7ro//,-r»;."' 1. In the 25'iternal dwelling, in the presence of the future bridegroom, the father, surrounded ordinarily > Pollux, III. 3, 38. 3 Homer, JIL, XVIII. 391. Hcsiod, Scutum, v. 275. Herod- otus, VI. 129, 130. Plutarch, Theseus, 10; Lycurg., passim. Solon, 20; Aristides, 20; Gr. Quest., 27. Demosthenes, in Stephanum, II. Isaeus, III. 39. Euripides, Helena, 722-725; Fhen.,Zib. Harpocration, v. Z^aiu^'Afa. Pollux, III. c. 3. The same usage among the Macedonians. Quintus Curtius, VIII. 16.
 * IJiuniXcia, TtQuyauia, Pollux, III. 38.