By Angeliki – Myrsini Spiliopoulou,
Marriage is absolutely the most important institution developed in every civilization and era, due to the element of the legalization of men’s and women’s cohabitation. However, getting married sometimes may also mean getting divorced after a while. This is a general truth, verified also in every era. In some countries, even today, divorce is forbidden, but it is extraordinary to think that in antiquity, in some societies, it was taken for granted: In ancient Greece, it was allowed to get divorced, even for women!
Divorce in ancient Athens was very interesting because of its regulations that used to differ under circumstances, regarding the gender of the person that asked for it. The husband’s will to get a divorce (=«αποπομπή») was not too difficult to be fulfilled: The only thing he had to do was to ask his wife to leave their «οίκος» (= “house”) and return any dowry that was given to him, back to her parents. However, if the reason was her infidelity, by law the husband had to divorce her. He also had the choice to kill her lover, if he caught them on bed, on the condition it was not planned in advance. The woman could not be harmed by him, but she was punished by forbidding her to attend theological events and wearing jewelry. Breaking those laws meant that anybody could use violence against her and undress her.
On the other hand, for a woman to get a divorce, even if it was possible, it was quite difficult to manage it. The husband in a marriage was sexually free and any kind of relationship between him and a free woman was allowed. In order to achieve a divorce, a woman had to ask for a written note from the lord who was in charge. It is a matter of great debate about how difficult it was for a wife to actually get this note and the exact role of this lord in this case. As it is described by Plutarch, when Alcibiades drags his wife to their house after she asked for divorce from the lord, the said lord did not prevent the husband’s intervention. This significant case leads us to believe that the lord may have just been a simple mediator, and not someone akin to a lawyer defending the wife.
However, there were reasons to get separated after marriage against the husband and wife’s will, those two being: death and «αφαίρεσις». There is not much to be said about the first case due to the normality of the separation. But «αφαίρεσις» was quite the extraordinary legal regulation. The common thing in «αφαίρεσις» was the wife’s father, for his own reasons, to ask for a divorce. In this case, the couple could not remain together. The other case of «αφαίρεσις» could take place after the death of the wife’s father. If her father died and she was the only heir, other relatives could ask for the end of the marriage in order for their heritage to not become part of her husband’s fortune. After the divorce, it was mandatory for her to get married again, but this time with a member from her own family. «Αφαίρεσις» could only happen if the couple had no children. We can conclude that the only way for a married couple to become the ones who would control their marriage and decide the moment this would end, was the birth of an offspring.
By studying marriage in ancient Athens, it gets obvious that the women’s position was not much reinforced. Nonetheless, the legislation of antiquity was not that cruel as one would expect, to force her to live with a person that treated her poorly. This can be claimed not only because women could ask for a divorce, but additionally her father, a person respected, had the authority to end the marriage.
References
- MacDoewell, μτφ Μαθιουδάκης Γ. «Tο δίκαιο στην Αθήνα των κλασικών χρόνων», 4η έκδοση. Παπαδήμας. Αθήνα. 2003
- Biscardi, μτφ. Παν. Δημάκης, «Αρχαίο ελληνικό δίκαιο», 7η έκδοση. Παπαδήμας. Αθήνα. 2010
