Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/111

Rh The jurists expressed this mystical unity in the provisions that man and wife could not go surety for each other, bear witness, contract debts, maintain suits, or divide property with each other. These are necessary corollaries of the "one flesh" doctrine. In respect to joint property there has been an important development toward the independence of women. In the wedding ceremony the groom led the bride around the domestic fire-altar three times, saying: "I am male; thou art female. Come, let us marry. Let us possess offspring. United in affection, illustrious, well-disposed toward each other, let us live for a hundred years." Although this formula was here directed only to procreation, it is an interesting historical parallel to the Roman formula and to a German formula, which latter ones had relation to rights.

"We shall not err if we understand that women in Iranian antiquity had substantially the same status as in Vedic India, or amongst the ancient Germans, or in the Homeric age of Greece. In all these cases we meet with the same conditions" ; that is to say, that in the ultimate forms of civilized society the status of women which we find is the same.

In the Zendavesta the sexes appear equal in rights and honor, but they never were so in fact in historical times. Zoroaster, according to the tradition, had three wives. Each man had concubines and slaves according to his means and his own judgment of his personal welfare, as was the case throughout the whole ancient world. The most remarkable feature of the Iranian social system