Gloria Ferrari
involve feasts. These similarities ^ admittedly shared by other rites ^ have been explained by the hypothesis that the wedding produces in the woman an irreversible change and, as much as the funeral in the case of the corpse, it seals her incorporation in a new community. In brief, both weddings and funerals are initiations of sorts. But again this is a false symmetry, for although the funeral is an irreversible initiation rite, it remains to be seen precisely what kind of a transition a Greek wedding is.
The pledging and giving out of brides
What are we to make of a large body of evidence that stresses the imper-manence of the marital union, the fact that the woman is denied full integration into the group to which she is now attached, and the fugitive character of female adulthood? I will now try to bring to the fore these ideas about marriage and womanhood, on the basis of the city-state about which we are best informed, Athens. What I have to say concerns the metaphors, which inform the Athenian conception of the wedding, that are embedded in legal formulas, ritual actions, and representations of marriage in poetry and visual representations.
The fundamental facts about marriage in archaic and classical Athens are generally agreed upon.6One distinguishes two important moments, which Redfield characterized as a transaction and a transformation, respectively:7 the engueª, generally translated as betrothal; and the ekdosis, or formal transferal of the bride to the groom. The engueª was what distinguished the legitimate wife (damar or guneªgameteª) from the concubine (pallakeª) by endowing a woman with the capacity to produce children who in time would be citizens, as we learn from a law cited by Demosthenes, and attributed to Solon by some:8
``(she) whom father or brother or grandfather pledges or gives by engueª, from this woman are born legitimate children (gneªsious).'' The marriage might follow immediately after the engueª or at a distance of time.9The ekdosis is the occasion for elaborate rituals, lasting several days, three at least. On the day when the bride was given to the groom, the anakalypteªria, there would be a banquet for the two families and friends, normally at the bride's house. At some point the bride would be ``uncovered'' or ``unveiled'' and honored with gifts. The transport from the house of her father or guardian (kurios) to that of her husband took place in the evening by the light of torches. In her new residence more ritual marked the entrance of the bride in the husband's oikos (``household''): the eating of a special food, a quince or pomegranate, and the showering of the pair with a basketful of dried fruits and nuts. With the consummation of the marriage began cohabitation.
There has been considerable debate in the past hundred years as to which of these actions meets a juridical definition of marriage.10At no point in the procedure was there a moment at which the bride consented to the marriage.
The only step that had legal consequences was the engueª, for which not even
her presence was required. The engueª insured the status of children, which might be born, should the parties involved actually ever enter into cohabitation.11But a woman thus promised might never be given away.
The non-binding quality of the engueª, coupled with the fact that no other part of the procedure was in itself constitutive of marriage in the legal sense, leads one to conclude with MacDowell that ``the legal difference between engueª and gamos was, roughly, that engueª was making a contract and gamos was carrying it out.''12
From the facts of the matter, I now turn to the poetic qualities of legal formulas, to consider first the ekdosis and then the engueª. In the case of the Athenian wedding, the proceedings are governed by a basic metaphor of commercial transaction, out of which spins a series of interrelated metaphors that are employed in rituals and in literary imagery.
What we call giving away the bride is expressed in epic with the simple verb
``to give'' (didonai). In classical Athens didonai may again be used, as it is, for instance in Menander's use of the formula, in which, with affected primitivism, the bride is ``given'' for the plowing.13But the technical term for the conveyance of the bride is ekdosis and the verb ekdidonai, literally ``to give out'', as it used, for instance by Isaeus, where the speaker's mother's legitimacy is demonstrated by the facts that she was ``given out''(ekdotheisan) by her father, as well as being
``pledged'' (eggueªtheisan) by him.14Wolff demonstrated in 1944 that ekdosis is the term used of the lease in contracts for ``a transfer which [. . .] conferred title upon a transferee, but at the same time reserved a right for the transferor.''15In this sense it is employed of objects of contracts for work, of slaves handed over for questioning by torture in lawsuits. In papyri it refers to the handing over of the baby to the wet nurse, and of an apprentice to a master. In Xenophon's tract on horsemanship, for instance, ekdidonai is used both of giving one's son out as an apprentice and of entrusting a colt to a trainer (On Horsemanship 2.2). The ekdosis, that is, is not a gift of the bride to the groom, but a conditional lease for the expressed purpose of producing children, who will be citizens. The metaphor is apt. Her natal family never totally relinquished its control over a married woman and the dowry that went with her, both of which might revert to it for a variety of reasons.16We are best informed about cases in which a married woman came into an inheritance, becoming epikleªros (``heiress'') and could be, and was claimed by her nearest male relatives on her father's side.17 A man would divorce his wife to marry an epikleªros. But marriages could be terminated for no particular reason and there is general agreement that divorce was easily obtained, although there is debate on how frequently it actually occurred.18To this add the married woman did not become part of her husband ankhistheia, the group of kin with rights of inheritance.19She remained, in a real sense, a stranger in the house.
No less than ekdosis, engueª is used for a range of commercial transactions that require a guarantee, or the establishment of securities.20One pledges himself as surety in the middle voice, and the thing which is pledged is the engueª, a sum
of money in the case envisaged in Demosthenes' speech against Apaturius, who, had Demosthenes truly become guarantor (engueªmenos) for Parmeno, would surely have demanded the sum guaranteed (engueªn) at once (33.24).
The word is also used for posting bail, as in the case of the law introduced by Timocrates, cited by Demosthenes: sureties were established for the payment of bail money (24.40). One understands the relationship between the two meanings of the word intuitively to mean that the future bride is pledged.
The noun engueª and the verb enguan contain an image, upon which the understanding of the procedure of engueª and of its import rests. Since antiquity that figure has been reconstructed on the basis of a hypothetical etymological derivation of engueª from guion, the hand, the hollow or palm of the hand.21This has led to seeing the engueª as a ``handing over'', which has taken two distinct forms. Wolff understood enguan to mean ``to hand over'' and enguasthai ``to receive into one's hands''. He explained the use of the same term for both guarantee and betrothal on the model of the Germanic contract of suretyship:
``guarantee was contracted by handing over the debtor to the guarantor who was to exercise control for the purpose of keeping the debtor at the creditor's disposal.''22Accordingly, the bride would be placed in the groom's keep but kept at her father's disposal. This metaphor is inept in several obvious respects, the most important of which is that it is not at this stage that the bride is given to the groom. Gernet's explanation has won favor that the term originally meant a solemn promise made on behalf of the family group, rather than the transferal of an object or person. In his view, what is put in the hand is a pledge, signified by a handshake.23This rationalizes the metaphor implicit in engueª, but does not bring its focal image into focus. What is the thing that is placed in the hand? The fact of the matter is that in the engueª nothing changes hands, except, sometimes, the dowry.
According to Chantraine, the Greek words gueª, guia, gualon constitute a group of terms that go back to the notion of ``hollow'', and ``vault''. ``The concrete sense of the group, he writes, appears in the substantive gualon, which designates various kinds of ``hollows''.24This, I believe, is the image we are after.
Hesychius defines guala as store-rooms for treasure, treasuries, and hollows,25but guala may also be said of cups and of the canopy of heaven.
What holds together these various meanings is the image of a hollow space as a container. A dominant image is that of the stony hollow and the cavern. In the Hecale, the great stone under which Aegeus places the sword and the boots for Theseus to find once he grows strong enough to lift it is a gualon lithon.26 Guala may be valleys, such as the valleys of Pieria, which hold the tomb of Euripides, in an epigram by Ion.27In Pindar's Nemean 10, the Dioscuri, who share one life by spending each alternate day on earth and the other in Hades, are said to be in the caves of Therapne, en gualois, deep under the earth.28In Euripides' Andromache1092^5, the underground caverns at Delphi are both caverns and treasury, they are caverns filled with gold: ``See that man
who moves along the god's caverns (guala) filled with gold, treasure-houses (thesaurous) of mortals, who comes again with the same aims as he did when he came before, to sack the temple of Phoebus?'' Here, as elsewhere, the sense of gualon is akin to that of English ``vault''. The sense of depositing something of value in the vault underlies the metaphoric use of engueªin theEumenides 894^8, in the final exchange between Athena and the Furies, which is shot through with metaphors of commercial exchange:
C H O R U S: Now suppose I have accepted. What reward (timeª) is in store for me?
A T H E N A:That no household shall flourish without you.
C H O R U S: Will you bring this about, that such power be mine?
A T H E N A:We shall raise the fortunes of the one who reveres you.
C H O R U S: And will you lay in store for me the fund (engueªn these) of all time to come?
To Athena's offer of hospitality the chorus replies by asking what their compensation will be ^ timeª, a word that means ``honor'' but also ``reward'' and ``price.'' Athena promises to augment the fortunes of those who hold them in awe. When the chorus ask if this will be forever, they use the expression engueªn these, will you set, lay down, or deposit, as in a bank, an engueª of all the time to come?
I believe that the image of laying valuables in store in a vault, or an underground vault, is the one that structures the sense of engueª as ``deposit'', one that suits its use both as guarantee and betrothal. I should make it clear that this is not a matter of tracing the etymology of the word, but of recovering the vehicle of the metaphor that shapes the very concept of engueª.29 For an understanding of the way in which engueª and ekdosis follow one another as stages of one and the same process, I rely on Benveniste's explanation of the peculiar semantic development connecting the expressions for hiding, burying, on the one hand, and giving out and lending, on the other, in Gothic.30 While filhan means ``to hide, to withdraw from sight'', corresponding to Greek kruptein, ana-filhan, equivalent to Greek ekdidosthai, means ``to give out'', ``to lease'', ``to farm out''. The German practice of burying resources and valuables, Benveniste reasoned, underlies the idea that goods that may be leased are buried treasure, which is unearthed at the moment of conveyance. What comes into play ^ not surprisingly ^ is the image of the bride as treasure.31The fact that the female is ``spoken for'' is cast in the figure of capital withdrawn from circulation and placed in the vault, from which she will be taken out when the moment comes to hand her over to the groom. As well as the contractual partnership of two men in the production of children for the state, the engueª then marks the beginning of the woman's rite of passage, the stage of separation.
The anakalupteªria
The poetic force of the metaphor of the bride as buried treasure informs the next phase of the marriage ritual. An important phase of the gamos (``wedding'') was the anakalupteªria, which is mentioned for the first time in a fragment of the cosmogony of Pherekydes of Syros, to be considered shortly.
Most of our information, however, comes from later sources, which explain that, on that occasion, the bride was ``uncovered''. The idea took shape long ago that the play of concealment and revelation that the word implies was acted out through a formal unveiling of the bride. There is now general agreement that the term was ``used for both the ceremonial unveiling of the bride before the bridegroom and also for the gifts given by the groom to the bride immediately following this unveiling,''32but one should note that anakalupteªria never means an act of unveiling.33The term was used to designate the day on which the bride was ``uncovered'', or ``unveiled'', for the groom to see, and also for the gifts she received on that day from the groom, relatives, and friends.34The lexicographers give theoªreªtra and opteªria as synonyms, both signifying seeing, as well as prosphthenkteªria, which emphasizes the fact that the bridegroom addressed the bride.35The singular anakalupteªrion signified the moment when the bride was brought out, on the third day, as well as a gift given on that occasion.36Debate continues over the place occupied by the unveiling in the sequence of events that constituted the wedding ceremony, but a few points seem secure.37One source specifies that the bride was uncovered at the wedding feast for the husband and guests to see.38Since that was the moment in which she first became visible, the bride's uncovering must have taken place before the couple's voyage to the husband's house, on foot or by wagon.39
Reasonable as it seems, the hypothesis that there was a ceremonial unveiling runs into difficulties, in part because it is difficult to decide what form the veiling took, in part because not every unveiling is an anakalupteªrion. We have literary and visual evidence to the effect that the bride was well-covered during and after the banquet. A caricature of the procession on a classical Athenian pyxis shows her entirely wrapped, for example.40Lucian (Symposium 8) writes of the strictly veiled bride at her own wedding feast. And a metaphor in Aeschylus' Agamemnon, 1178^9, which is sometimes brought forward in support of the unveiling,41seems to say precisely the opposite. In that passage, Cassandra says: ``no longer will my prophecy peek out from under veils, like a newly wedded bride (neogamounumpheªsdikeªn)''. The neogamosnumpheª is the bride, but the bride just married, not the bride-to-be. In addition, the newly wedded bride's mantle, or veil, figures prominently in representations of the marriage procession, whether by chariot or on foot, in archaic and classical art. On Athenian black-figure vases it is a richly woven affair that she wears drawn over her head and holds out to shield her left cheek, in a distinctive flourish that is in part a display of decorum and in part sheer
display. In kind, the ``bridal gesture'' as it is called, is an exaggeration of the act of veiling oneself, which is performed by all persons possessed of aidoªs.42 Thetis holds this pose standing in the chariot, surrounded by the gods,43 but even the protagonist of the Amasis Painter's modest wedding by mule cart parades her oversize mantle with ostentation.44The bridal gesture is rare on late archaic and classical Athenian vases, but the mantle is no less in evidence. When the procession is on foot, attention is drawn to it by the fussy gesture of an attendant, the nympheutria, who follows the bride as the pair approach the marriage chamber, adjusting the way the mantle falls on her head, or on her neck and shoulders.45On a black-figure tripod-pyxis of the early fifth century, for instance, is the picture of the cortege arriving at the newlyweds' thalamos (``wedding chamber''). This is the wedding of Heracles and Hebe, and behind Hebe the woman arranging the bride's mantle may be Aphrodite.46 On the skyphos by Makron, it is indeed Aphrodite who arranges Helen's mantle, as the latter is led away by Paris, as though a bride.47 Evidence of the importance of the bride's mantle is not limited to vase-paintings. From the sanctuary of Persephone at Locri come series of votive terracotta plaques decorated with subjects related to the marriage of Persephone and Hades. These include one series depicting a cortege bringing the mantle, which lays folded upon a tray, and a deep cup.48The mantle is at center stage on the metope from the temple of Hera at Selinus, which represents a marriage of divinities, probably Zeus and Hera.49The god, seated, grasps the bride's wrist in the traditional gesture of marriage. She stands before him, framed by the great mantle. The display of the mantle characterizes Hera among the gods on the East frieze of the Parthenon, advertising the fact that she is the ``lawfully wedded wife'' (kouridieª alochos) of Zeus. Does this gesture signify the ritual unveiling at the anakalupteªria? Twice in literary imagery the figure indeed marks the moment at which the bride meets the groom. In a fragment of Euphorion, the city of Thebes is said to be the anakalupteªrion (here: ``wedding gift'') of Zeus to Persephone, ``when she was about to see her husband for the first time, turning aside the cover of her nuptial mantle.''50Centuries later, Philostratus describes a painting of Pelops and his bride Hippodamia in the chariot, ``she arrayed in nuptial attire, uncovering her cheek, now that she has won the right to a husband'' (Imagines 1.17.3).
There remains to be considered, however, what is arguably the most
There remains to be considered, however, what is arguably the most