Feminism / by Correa Moylan Walsh.

Correa Moylan Walsh

Date:: 1917

Credit: Feminism / by Correa Moylan Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

110/412 page 98

$the children belonged to the clan of their mother, now the wife was taken into the husband’s clan, or gens, and the children belonged to the father’s clan and family. But the man’s property, for mili- tary as well as for religious reasons, had to remain in the clan and in the family, and therefore it could not go to women, who left them. When there was no son, but only a daughter or daughters, special arrangements had to be made. At first the male next of kin seized the property, against whom then the daughter had only the rights of a sister. Later more consideration was shown to the daughter, provided she would marry one of her own family or clan, for then the whole property might go to her husband without alienating it from the clan. This made an excep- tion to the rule of marrying outside the clan, or exogamy, and may have been a survival, or revival, of what perhaps was a more ancient custom of endogamy or marrying within the clan, or, at all events, of what took place under matronymy, when clanship went in the female line. This exception, however, was tolerated, and even enjoined, for this special purpose.®’ The property, it must be noted, went not so much to the daughter, as through her, and to her husband, or through her and her husband as guardians to her son, the father’s grandson, who became his true successor.®® The marriage of such an heiress with one of her father’s kindred was not everywhere required; but generally marriage into another propertied family, in which the property of the deceased would be merged and lost, was shunned. Many a young man, either an uninheriting younger brother or of humble origin, or a stranger, acquired wealth (at least the disposal of it) and high position, by marrying an only daughter of a prominent man or chieftain. Historical and individual instances are best known, in the middle ages, among royalty and the nobility, among whom the custom 97 E.g., Numbers, XXXVI. 6-0, cf. XXVII. 8-11. \ 98 See Seebohm, op. cit., 23-7) using mostly the authority of Isaeus. A daughter married out of the clan even had to be divorced, to permit the marriage required. The daughter was not properly heiress, but éwix\npos, “one going with the estate.” _ 99 See Pearson’s interesting essay on Ashiepatile: or Hans seeks his Luck, in Chances of Death, ii. 50-91. The nursery tales therein. reviewed certainly lead back to early conditions, but not necessarily, all of them, to the mother-age, because the rincesses, by marrying whom the pubels gain their fortunes, often are brotherless. or an ancient tale of a similar sort, about the succession of a smaakonig, but with the marriage left out, see the story of Perdiccas in Macedonia, told by Herodotus, VIII. 137-8. More historical is his account of Gyges, who became king of Sardis, after murdering the king, upon marrying the king’s widow, the queen, I, 7-13 (cf. Hamlet’s uncle), and of Cyrus’s father, who married the king’s daughter, I. 91, 107; cf. also 109, 120. Yet, of course, this practice occurred also among matronymic peoples, as among the Lycians, whose king gave to Bellerophon his (the queen’s) daughter in matriage and half his kingdom, Iliad, VI. 192-3. So Todens gained the king’s daugh- ter at Argos, XIV. 121. The Greek founder of Marseilles was chosen in bag ky T by the daughter of the king of the Sigobriges, who occupied the region, Justin, XLIIT. 3. 7Eneas won the daughter of king Latinus. Later at Rome Ancus Marcus was the son of a prior king’s daughter, and Servius Tullius married the king’s daughter, Livy, | ec ferai go$

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