FURTHER READING
M. M. Austin and P. Vidal-Naquet, Economic and Social History of
Ancient Greece: An Introduction (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1977).
George Ayittey, Indigenous African Institutions (New York: Trans-
national Publishers, 1991).
Karen Olsen Bruhns and Karen E. Stothert, Women in Ancient
America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999).
Confucius, Th e Analects of Confucius, trans. Arthur Waley (New
York: Vintage Books, 1989).
Jack Goody, Th e European Family: An Historico-Anthropological Es-
say (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell Publishers, 2000).
Rosalind M. Janssen and Jac. J. Janssen, Growing Up in Ancient
Egypt (London: Rubicon Press, 1990).
M. R. Lefk owitz and M. B. Fant, Women’s Life in Greece and Rome
(Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982).
Lynn Meskell, Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2002).
Arthur Phillips, Survey of African Marriage and Family Life (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1953).
H. K Schneider, “Kinship and Lineage Amongst the Yoruba,” Africa
25 (October 4, 1955): 352–374.
Jo-Ann Shelton, As the Romans Did, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1998).
Marten Stol, “Private Life in Ancient Mesopotamia.” In Civiliza-
tions of the Ancient Near East, ed. J. M. Sasson (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1995).▶ festivals
introduction
Ancient peoples were highly dependent on their natural envi-
ronment. Rather than conquering it, they usually learned to
fi nd ways to make peace with it and try to understand their
place within the natural world. Many of the festivals ancient
peoples took part in served the purpose of refl ecting their
cosmology, or understanding of the origins and structure of
the world.
Th roughout the ancient world, festivals of various sorts
were held in conjunction with natural events. In colder north-
ern climates, for example, the course of people’s lives was dic-Marriage Laws. Th eir marriage code, however, is
strict, and indeed no part of their manners is more
praiseworthy. Almost alone among barbarians they
are content with one wife, except a very few among
them, and these not from sensuality but because their
noble birth procures for them many off ers of alliance.
Th e wife does not bring a dower to the husband, but
the husband to the wife. Th e parents and relatives are
present and pass judgment on the marriage-gifts, gifts
not meant to suit a woman’s taste, nor such as a bride
would deck herself with, but oxen, a caparisoned steed,
a shield, a lance, and a sword. With these presents the
wife is espoused, and she herself in her turn brings her
husband a gift of arms. Th is they count their strongest
bond of union, these their sacred mysteries, these
their gods of marriage. Lest the woman should think
herself to stand apart from aspirations after noble
deeds and from the perils of war, she is reminded by
the ceremony which inaugurates marriage that she is
her husband’s partner in toil and danger, destined to
suff er and to dare with him alike both in peace and war.
Th e yoked oxen, the harnessed steed, the gift of arms
proclaim this fact. She must live and die with the feeling
that she is receiving what she must hand down to her
children neither tarnished nor depreciated, what future
daughters-in-law may receive and may be so passed on
to her grandchildren.Th us with their virtue protected they live uncorrupted
by the allurements of public shows or the stimulant
of feastings. Clandestine correspondence is equally
unknown to men and women. Very rare for so numerous
a population is adultery, the punishment for which is
prompt, and in the husband’s power. Having cut off the
hair of the adulteress and stripped her naked, he expels
her from the house in the presence of her kinsfolk
and then fl ogs her through the whole village. Th e loss
of chastity meets with no indulgence; neither beauty,
youth, nor wealth will procure the culprit a husband.
No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the
fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted. Still better is
the condition of those states in which only maidens are
given in marriage and where the hopes and expectations
of a bride are then fi nally terminated. Th ey receive one
husband, as having one body and one life, that they
may have no thoughts beyond, no further-reaching
desires, that they may love not so much the husband as
the married state. To limit the number of children or to
destroy any of their subsequent off spring is accounted
infamous, and good habits are here more eff ectual than
good laws elsewhere.From: Tacitus, Th e Agricola and Germania,
trans. A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribb
(London: Macmillan, 1877), pp. 87ff.Tacitus: Excerpt from Germania
Europefestivals: introduction 461