garb of the two periods. The garb of the Doric woman hung loose from her shoulders; it left the arms free, and thighs exposed: it is the garb of Diana, who is represented as free and bold in our museums. The Ionian garb, on the contrary, concealed the body and hampered its motion. The garb of woman to-day is, far more than usually realized, a sign of her dependence and helplessness. The style of woman's dress amongst most peoples, down to our own days, renders her awkward, forces on her a sense of weakness, and makes her timid; and this, finally, finds its expression in her attitude and character. The custom among the Spartans of letting the girls go naked until marriageable age – a custom that the climate allowed – contributed considerably, in the opinion of an ancient writer, to impart to them a taste for simplicity and for attention to decency. Nor was there in the custom, according to the views of those days, aught offensive to decorum, or inciting to lust. Furthermore, the girls participated in all the bodily exercises, just as the boys, and thus there was reared a vigorous, proud, self-conscious race, a race that was conscious of its own merit, as proved by the answer of Leonidas' wife to the stranger.
In intimate connection with the mother-right, after it had ceased to be a ruling social principle, stood certain customs, which modern writers, ignorant of their meaning, designate as "prostitution." In Babylon, it was a religious duty with the maid, who had reached puberty, to appear once in the temple of Mylitta in order to offer her maidenhood as a sacrifice, by surrendering herself to some man. Similarly happened in the Serapeum of Memphis; in Armenia, in honor of the goddess Anaitis; in Cyprus; in Tyrus and Sidon, in honor of Astarte or Aphrodite. The festivals of Isis among the Egyptians served similar customs. This sacrifice of virginity was demanded in order to atone with the goddess for the exclusive surrender of woman to one man in marriage: – "Not that she may wilt in the arms of a single man is woman arrayed by nature with all the charms at its command."14 The continued favor of the goddess had to be purchased by the sacrifice of virginity to a stranger. It was likewise in line with the old idea that the Lybian maids earned their dower by prostituting their bodies. In accord with the mother-right, these women were sexually free during their unmarried status; and the men saw so little objection in these pickings, that those were taken by them for wives who had been most in demand. It was thus also among the Thracians, in the days of Herodotus: "They do not watch the maidens, but leave them full freedom to associate with whom they please. The women, however, they watch strictly. They buy them from their parents for large sums." Celebrated were the Hierodulae of the temple of Aphrodite at Corinth, where always more than one thousand maidens were gathered, and constituted a chief point of attraction for the men of Greece. Of the daughter of King Cheops of Egypt, the legend relates that she had a pyramid built out of the proceeds of prostitution of her charms.
Conditions, similar to these, prevail down to now, on the Mariana, the Philippine and the Polynesian islands; according to Waitz, also among several African tribes. Another custom, prevalent till late on the Balearic islands, and indicative of the right of all men to a woman, was that, on the wedding night, the male kin had access to the bride in order of seniority. The bridegroom came last; he then took her as wife into his own possession. This custom has been changed among other people so that the priest or the tribal chiefs (kings) exercise the privilege over the bride, as representatives of the men of the tribe. On Malabar, the Caimars hire patamars (priests) to deflower their wives… The chief priest (Namburi) is in duty bound to render this service to the king (Zamorin) at his wedding, and the king rewards him with fifty gold pieces.15 In Further India, and on several islands of the great ocean, it is sometimes the priests and sometimes the tribal chiefs who undertake the function.16 The same happens in Senegambia, where the tribal chief exercises, as a duty of his office, the deflowering of maids, and receives therefor a present. Again, with other peoples, the custom was, and continues here and yonder, that the deflowering of a maid, sometimes even of a child only a few months old, is done by means of images of deities, fashioned expressly for this purpose. It may also be accepted as certain that the "jus primae noctis" (the right of the first night), prevalent in Germany and all Europe until late in the Middle Ages, owes its origin to the same tradition, as Frederick Engels observes. The landlord, who, as master of his dependents and serfs, looked upon himself as their chief, exercised the right of the head of the tribe, a right that he considered had passed over to himself as the arbiter of their lives and existence.
Echoes of the mother-right are further detected in the singular custom among some South American tribes, that, instead of the lying-in woman, the man goes to bed, there acts like a woman in labor, and is tended by the wife. The custom implies that the father recognizes the new born child as his own. By imitating the pains of child-birth, the man fills the fiction that the birth is also his work; that he, therefore, has a right to the child, who, according to the former custom, belonged to the mother and the mother's gens, respectively. The custom is said to have also maintained itself among the Basques, who must be looked upon as a people of primitive usages and customs. Likewise is the custom said to prevail among several mountain tribes in China. It prevailed until not long since in Corsica.
In Greece likewise did woman become an article of purchase. So soon as she stepped into the house of her marital lord, she ceased to exist for her family. This was symbolically expressed by burning before the door the handsomely decked wagon which took her to the house of her husband. Among the Ostiaks of Siberia, to this day, the father sells his daughter: he chaffers with the representative of the bridegroom about the price to be paid. Likewise among several African tribes, the same as in the days of Jacob, the custom is that a man who courts a maid, enters in the service of his future mother-in-law. Even with us, marriage by purchase has not died out: it prevails in bourgeois society worse than ever. Marriage for money, almost everywhere customary among the ruling classes, is nothing other than marriage by purchase. Indeed, the marriage gift, which in all civilized countries the bridegroom makes to the bride, is but a symbol of the purchase of the wife as property.
Along with marriage by purchase, there was the custom of marriage by rape. The rape of women was a customary practice, not alone among the ancient Jews, but everywhere in antiquity. It is met with among almost all nations. The best known historic instance is the rape of the Sabine women by the Romans. The rape of women was an easy remedy where women ran short, as, according to the legend, happened to the early Romans; or where polygamy was the custom, as everywhere in the Orient. There it assumed large proportions during the supremacy of the Arabs, from the seventh to the twelfth century.
Symbolically, the rape of woman still occurs, for instance among the Araucans of South Chile. While the friends of the bridegroom are negotiating with the father of the bride, the bridegroom steals with his horse into the neighborhood of the house, and seeks to capture the bride. So soon as he catches her, he throws her upon his horse, and makes off with her to the woods. The men, women and children thereupon raise a great hue and cry, and seek to prevent the escape. But when the bridegroom has reached the thick of the woods, the marriage is considered consummated. This holds good also when the abduction takes place against the will of the parents. Similar customs prevail among the peoples of Australia.
Among ourselves, the custom of "wedding trips" still reminds us of the former rape of the wife: the bride is carried off from her domestic flock. On the other hand, the exchange of rings is a reminiscence of the subjection and enchainment of the woman to the man. The custom originated in Rome. The bride received an iron ring from her husband as a sign of her bondage to him. Later the ring was made of gold; much later the exchange of rings was introduced, as a sign of mutual union.
The old family ties of the gens had, accordingly, lost their foundation through the development of the conditions of production, and through the rule of private property. Upon the abolition of the gens, grounded on mother-right, the gens, grounded on the father-right first took its place, although not for long, and with materially weakened functions. Its task was mainly to attend to the common religious affairs and to the ceremonial of funerals: to safeguard the mutual obligation of protection and of help against violence: to enforce the right, and, in certain cases, the duty of marrying in the gens, in cases when rich heiresses or female orphans were concerned. The gens, furthermore,
Bachofen. "Das Mutterrecht."
K. Kautsky, "Die Entstehung der Ehe und der Familie," Kosmos, 1883.
Montegazza, "L'Amour dans l'Humanite."
