let us turn to the marriage question, and in particular to the rights and responsibilities of the widow.
We need not be surprised if in connection with her, we meet with survivals of primitive marriage law, because instances of this are not infrequent in Homer. Thus, we have constant references to the appropriation of captured girls as concubines, as, for instance, the familar case of Briseis. We have, again, marriage by Confarreatio in the bridal of the daughters of Menelaus, where we also mark the very primitive custom of celebrating several marriages simultaneously, which has been considered to imply a primitive pairing time.[1] Further, we have instances of what anthropologists call Beena marriage, where the bridegroom serves for and lives with the bride in the house of her father ; connected with this we have cases of brides bestowed without dowry in return for special services rendered.[2] More primitive still is the secret co-habitation of Zeus and Hera.[3] We hear of no law of exogamy ; in fact, Hector seems to taunt Paris with bringing a wife from abroad ;[4] and the neglect of the usual prohibited degrees is shown in the cases of brother and sister, and nephew and aunt marriage.[5]
This will prepare us for finding traces of primitive law in the case of the widow, with whom we are here more immediately concerned. It may be said that in regard to her, there are at least three stages in the evolution of early
- ↑ Odyssey, iv., 4 ; Iliad, xviii., 491 seqq ; Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 27. There is a good instance of this, a natural accompaniment of polygamy, in the case of Timour, who celebrated the marriage of six of his grandsons on one occasion. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, (ed. W. Smith), vol. viii., p. 62.
- ↑ Iliad, vi. , 246 seqq ; xiv., 121 ; xiii., 366 ; Odyssey, xv., 241.
- ↑ Iliad, xiv., 295; Westermarck, loc. cit., pp. 22, 61, 151 ; Letourneau, Evolution of Marriage, p. 195.
- ↑ Iliad, iii., 46.
- ↑ Iliad, xvi., 432 ; xi., 226, Odyssey, vii., 54, seqq, x., 7. For instances, see Frazer, Pausanias, vol. ii., pp. 84, seqq.
