Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

76 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
On arrival at the bridegroom’s house, the pair was showered
with nuts and dried figs called katakysmata, symbolic of the prosperity
that it was hoped would attend the marriage. Boys with both
parents still alive offered the guests bread, which they served from
a basket used for winnowing corn—another symbol of prosperity.
Prayers were probably spoken or sung, but there was no state official
or priest in attendance. In a play by Menander, the groom’s
father says to the bride, “I give you my daughter so that you can
sow her in order to produce legitimate children.” The groom replies:
“I accept her.” However, we know of no standard form of words
corresponding to an exchange of vows. The pair then entered the
bridal chamber, and the bride removed her veil. The bridegroom
then presented his bride with gifts called optêria (from opteuô, meaning
“to see”), celebrating the fact that this was the first time (officially
at least) that he had seen her without the veil. The door to
the bridal chamber was closed, and a hymn called an epithalamion
(from thalamos, meaning “inner chamber or bedroom”) was sung
outside. Its somewhat macabre purpose, according to a late source,
was to cover the cries of the bride as she underwent the violence of
penetration.
A Wife’s First Duty
The overriding duty of a Greek wife was to provide her husband
with offspring, preferably boys, to ensure that his household did
not die out. In addition to the pressure to conceive that came from
the husband and the husband’s family, there would also have been
pressure from society at large, because every Greek community
expected its citizens to beget legitimate children in order to keep
the population at parity. Because of the high level of infant mortality,
it is estimated that each married couple would have had to
produce four or five children to achieve this modest target.
The obligation to become pregnant was reinforced by medical theory, which
taught that abstinence from sex was injurious to health. A text ascribed to Hippokrates,
the legendary founder of Greek medicine, states:
Women who have intercourse are healthier than those who abstain. For the
womb is moistened by intercourse and ceases to be dry, whereas when it is drier
than it should be it contracts violently and this contraction causes pain to the
body. (Seed 4)