THE HISTORY OF THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF ANCIENT GREECE. BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. MARRIAGE CEREMONIES. When marriage was determined on, whether love or interest prompted to it, the business part of the transaction, which in all countries is exceedingly unromantic, was delegated, as in China, to a female matchmaker,[1] whose professional duties appear to have been considered important. She carried the lovers proposals to the family of his mistress, or rather, perhaps, broke the ice and paved the way for him. In the earlier ages men, no doubt, performed this delicate office themselves, or entrusted it to their parents; as in Homer we find Achilles declaring, that his father Peleus shall choose a wife for him. Earlier still, if we may credit certain prevalent traditions, men dispensed altogether with such preliminaries and lived “more pecudum” with the first females who came in their way; a state of barbarism from which it is said they were reclaimed by Cecrops.[2] But, to whomsoever this fable may trace its origin, it is evidently unworthy of the slightest credit. Of times sunk in such an abyss of ignorance no record could remain, or even of many succeeding revolutions of manners touching close upon the orbit of civilisation. If, however, the tradition arose originally out of any real innovation in manners, it may refer to the partial abolition of polygamy, which, whether made by Cecrops or not, was an important step in the progress of the Greeks towards polished life. ----- Footnote 1: Προμνηστρία. Aristoph. Nub. 41. et Schol. Poll. iii. 41. Footnote 2: Athen. xiii. 2. Mr. Mitford defers too much to “the traditions received in the polished ages” when, upon the authority of such traditions and of such writers as Justin (ii. 6.), he appears to conclude that, before the time of Cecrops, the people of Attica were in knowledge and civilisation inferior to the wildest savages. Hist, of Greece, i. 58. Upon legends and authors of this description no reliance can be placed. If society existed, everything “indispensable” to society also existed; therefore, if marriage be so, it could not be unknown. Besides, how happens it that this same Cecrops who instituted marriage did not likewise teach them to sow corn, which, if Egypt was, when he left it, a civilised country, must have been as familiar to him as matrimony? This most necessary acquisition, however, they were left to make many ages afterwards, during the reign of Erechtheus. Justin, ii. 6. -----