Comparing young women, marriage and the home

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By confarreatio, a religious ceremony in which the couple shared a cake of spelt before the chief priests, or by coemptio, a symbolic purchase of the bride before witnesses.

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Source A shows that a well-off Athenian girl was expected to have domestic skills. Ischomachus' wife came to him 'not yet fifteen', knowing 'only how to take wool and make a cloak' and how 'the spinning was given out to the maids', so she had been prepared to run the textile work of a household and supervise slaves as its kyria. She had been kept sheltered, seeing and hearing 'as little as possible', which shows that innocence was valued more than knowledge, and she was praised for self-control in eating, a moral skill.

Source B shows a very different skill: literacy. The young woman holds wax writing tablets and presses a stylus to her lips as if composing something, so she wants to be seen as educated and thoughtful. Her golden hairnet and earrings show wealth, so learning was a mark of a cultured, high-status Roman woman, like Cornelia or Pliny's wife Calpurnia.

Both sources show the skills expected of a girl from a wealthy family, but the Athenian ideal was sheltered domestic training, while the Roman painting suggests that reading and writing could be a source of pride.

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Source A shows that a slave woman could rise within an Athenian household. Ischomachus and his wife chose as housekeeper the woman who was 'most self-controlled' and had 'the best memory', so a slave could be promoted to a position of trust, in charge of the stores and other slaves. They shared their happiness, troubles and success with her and showed her that the just 'live richer and freer lives', which suggests rewards and perhaps eventual freedom. But her improvement depended entirely on her owners, who even judged her on her 'relations with men'.

Source B shows that in Rome a slave woman could become free and respectable. The husband and wife on the relief had both been freed, and the clasped right hands show a legal marriage, something slaves could not have. She wears a palla over her head like a respectable matrona, and the couple could afford a stone relief recording their names, so they were proud of their new status and had some wealth.

Both sources show slave women improving their position, but in Athens this happened within slavery, through trust and favour, while in Rome freedom could bring a legal marriage and a respectable place in society.

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There is strong evidence that marriage in both Greece and Rome was mainly about property and children. In Athens, a girl's kyrios betrothed her with a formula giving her 'for the ploughing of legitimate children', and she brought a dowry with her. If a man died leaving only a daughter, she became an epikleros and had to marry her nearest male relative so that the property stayed in the family. After Pericles' citizenship law of 451 BC, only the children of a citizen wife could be citizens, which made a legitimate wife essential. Apollodorus put it bluntly: men had mistresses for pleasure, but wives to bear legitimate children and faithfully guard the house. Xenophon's Ischomachus describes marriage as a partnership to run the household and to have children who would care for their parents in old age. In Sparta, Lycurgus even allowed husbands to share wives in order to produce strong children.

Roman marriage had the same purposes. Fathers arranged their daughters' marriages, often for political reasons - Octavian married his sister Octavia to Antony to seal an alliance, and Augustus married his daughter Julia three times to suit his plans for the succession. The dowry was central, and childlessness could end a marriage: Carvilius Ruga was remembered as the first Roman to divorce his wife because she had no children. Augustus later rewarded parents of three children and penalised the unmarried.

However, love was clearly valued and often grew within marriage. The Laudatio Turiae is the most moving evidence: when Turia, unable to have children, offered to divorce her husband so that he could have heirs with another woman, he was horrified and refused, and they stayed married for over forty years. Claudia's epitaph says she 'loved her husband with all her heart', and Pliny wrote of missing his wife Calpurnia so much that he went to her empty room at night. Roman funerary reliefs show husbands and wives clasping right hands as a sign of harmony and loyalty. Greek evidence is less direct, but the tenderness of grave stelai such as Ampharete's and the Eros figures on wedding vases show that love and desire were hoped for, and Xenophon wanted husband and wife to respect each other as partners.

We must be careful with this evidence, though. Epitaphs and eulogies were written to praise and follow standard patterns, and Pliny wrote his letters for publication. Athenian marriages, with a girl of fourteen marrying a man twice her age and then living in the women's quarters, left little room for the companionship that Roman sources describe.

Overall, I largely agree that the purpose of marriage in both cultures was property and legitimate children - this is shown by arranged marriages, dowries and divorce for childlessness. But love was not absent: it was hoped for and often developed, and Roman sources in particular show that a good marriage was meant to be a loving partnership as well as a means of producing heirs.