ET CETERA ANTIQUA

📝 Classical Civilisation essay, Year 11. Mark: 7/8. Teacher feedback: “Great use of sources and outstanding factual knowledge (AO1). You just need to make sure that the points in each paragraph are substantially different from each other to be confident of picking up marks for each one.”

Source A suggests that an Athenian bride would have enjoyed her wedding. It shows the torchlight procession, which was led by her mother. During the procession, the men would sing wedding songs and the women would throw fruit and flowers. The bride might have enjoyed being the centre of attention for once; women were almost always kept inside. A wedding was one of the few times when women could meet, and this meant the bride could meet her friends, which would have been enjoyable.

Source B suggests that a bride wouldn’t have enjoyed her wedding. Herodotus describes a betrothal where “Megacles declared that he accepted her, and the formalities of the betrothal were complete.” This suggests the bride wouldn’t enjoy her wedding because it is portrayed as a transaction, a business deal. The bride had absolutely no say in the matter either — the betrothal was decided by the groom and her kyrios. In Menander’s Perikeiromene, Pataikos (the bride’s kyrios) says “I give you this girl for the plowing of legitimate children.” This further emphasises the point that a bride wouldn’t have enjoyed her wedding because her only purpose was to have legitimate male heirs. She didn’t marry for love, and she probably didn’t want to get married so young, to someone much older than her either. She was probably very scared because she wouldn’t have had any experience with men, because she was so sheltered her whole life.

Another reason an Athenian bride wouldn’t enjoy her wedding was because she was so young. The bride would usually be around fifteen, while the groom would be in his twenties or thirties. This shows that an Athenian bride wouldn’t enjoy her wedding because she was probably scared to marry someone so much older than her, who would have had more experience. This is shown in Xenophon’s Oikonomios, when Ischomachos said (about his wife) “she was not yet fifteen years old when she came to me.”

In conclusion, an Athenian bride may have enjoyed her wedding because it was one of the few occasions where she wasn’t overlooked, and she could socialise with other women. However, I think that she wouldn’t have enjoyed it because of how little say she got in the matter and the fact that the groom would have been so much older than her.