Legal Position of Women in Ancient Greece. he had crossed the Stygian flood, and which could only be continued by his male descen dants. So if he had no son of his own he got over the difficulty by adopting somebody else's, who became his heir; as he could not will away his property from his daughter, and as she could not perform the religious duties which were attached to the estate, and a condition of the tenure, he betrothed the heiress to his adopted son. If, however, the daughter was already married and he did not wish to interfere with her husband, he adopted her son. He could not adopt the husband of his daughter, because a man could not have two fathers; when a man was "adopted into " a family he was " adopted out " of his old family, he forfeited all con nection with it; as he assumed all the privi leges, duties and encumbrances of the new family, so he renounced all claim to inherit from his original family and was released from the duty of continuing its worship. In Athens a wife was considered a stranger to her husband's family; she had no claim upon his property, she could not inherit from him, and if without sons she could not, after his death remain in his house unless she pleaded pregnancy; then under the protec tion of the archon she could stay until the child was born. Nor could a mother inherit from her children. The Gortyna code, in force in Crete in the sixth or fifth century before Christ, was in many ways more favorable to women than the Attic laws. By it, although the sons had the sole right to the town house, its furniture and the cattle of their father, the daughters shared in the rest of the patrimony, a daugh ter getting half as much as a son. In Gor tyna a mother's dowry did not, as in Athens,
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become the property of her sons as soon as they became of age, but she enjoyed it while she lived, possessing the same rights over it as a father had over his, and at her death it went as a man's estate went. In Gortyna a man had not to give up his wife if she became an heiress and the next of kin claimed her when she did not wish to go, nor was a man compelled to put away his wife because he had become entitled to an heiress whom he was expected to marry. He might resign his claim on the estate and on the girl. And the heiress (if single) might be content with the town house and half of the remainder of the estate, and then might marry whom she would within the limits of the tribe. If a married woman became an heiress she was not compelled to divorce her husband and take the next of kin, though she might do so if she chose. If she did divorce him she had (if she was childless) to take the next of kin, or indemnify him for his loss; if she had children she might take any tribesman she preferred. The same principle applied in the case of a widow, the next of kin lost his claim to both the estate and the heiress, if she had children. In Gortyna the next of kin was not bound to provide a girl with a dowry if she was poor and he did not want to marry her. In Athens, citizen women were often en gaged in retail business, and a special place in the market was allotted to them. The mother of Euripides was a retail dealer in vegetables. Such employment was, how ever, deemed low and disreputable, yet the law regarded it as libellous to reproach or insult any male or female citizen for follow ing such a calling.
