Herodotos also discusses foreign peoples, without referring to intermarriage with Greeks. Confrontation with Egypt through exploration and colonization produced a Greek view of a society in which gender and spatial division of labor was exactly the reverse of the Greek norm. Herodotos (2.35) reports that among the Egyptians men stay home and weave, while women go to market. He also includes briefer ethnographies of people on the fringes of the Greek world who did not prize the virginity of unmarried girls nor consider a wife the sexual partner exclusively of her husband (as did most Greeks), but who practice fraternal polyandry, or promiscuous intercourse, or among whom unmarried girls are free, but married women are guarded vigilantly (1.216; 4.104, 172, 180; 5.6). In Asia young girls work as prostitutes until they accumulate sufficient funds for a dowry (Hdt. 1.93-4). Then they are considered marriageable, and arrange their own marriages. The Eneti of Illyria buy their brides at auction (Hdt. 1.196). Once in a lifetime Babylonian wives must have intercourse with a stranger (Hdt. 1.199). The Libyan king deflowers a bride from each cohort of marriageable women (Hdt. 4.168). The Massagetai share wives (Hdt. 1.216). The Nasamones practice promiscuous intercourse starting on the wedding night (Hdt. 4.172). The Ausees of Libya do not marry at all, but award a child to the potential father the child most resembles (Hdt. 4.180). Among the Gindanes women wear anklets to advertise the number of men with whom they have had intercourse (Hdt. 4.176). To further their political ambitions, or to ferret out other men’s secrets, a series ofEgyptians as well as some other barbarian fathers tell their daughters to sleep with any man who comes to them (Hdt. 2.121, 126, 3.69). Among the Lykians, children inherit their name and status as citizens through the mother (1.173). In contrast, among the Greeks it was essential for a bride to be a virgin, and the father supplied the dowry, arranged his daughter’s marriage, and was the parent who conferred legitimacy on offspring. A major distinction between Greeks and barbarians is that the former are monogamous and the latter are polygynous.
World History
