Sexuality and Its Development

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Historically, a Jew having completed his Mitzvah (Batmitzvah is a 20th century invention IIRC) was considered old enough to marry. I'm not saying Jews have historically gotten married (or engaged in sex) that young, but according to the law, they could.

 

I was just reading that the life expectancy in ancient Greece was 25. Most people died very young, and sexual activity was greatly accelerated. Most women were expected to have at least five children by the age of twenty-five, and the families of males held a feast once the young males were able to have their first "spurt." Without a lot of sexual activity there would never have been enough people to sustain the population, because of the high mortality rate.

The rise and popularity of Judaism, then Christianty, then later, orthodox Islam, put the brakes on what had come naturally to many in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome (all "pagans" of course). Early religious scholars, chruch fathers (and other assorted zealots), probaby saw that everyone else was having more fun than they were....

 

Even in the middle ages under Christianity children were married at a young age. This did not mean complete sexual freedom especially for a woman. Marriage was for ecconomic or political in many cases. Even among the Vikings marriages were arranged.

Historically women have had little sexual freedom. Once men found out they had something to do with children being born females lost that freedom.

 

actually Nakia among the vikings, a free woman had very much freedom. in the cities of the actual viking raiders, a woman ran the house when the man wasn't home, if the man died in battle or on ship, she was intitled to his share of the loot.
And before she married, sex was allowed, as long as it was anal.

later on under christianity some danish fishervillage kept around some of these rules. a real funny rule, is the rule of lok, if a womans man was away on a fishing trip (for months at a time) and that woman got pregnant while he was away, it was still considered his child, because even though the woman of cause had been with another, it was considered okay since her husband was so much away.

@ragusa, i dont think i ever said he was wrong, just that your both exaggerate the risk of actually getting pregnant. and honestly we are talking first experience so sexual deseases is practically not a problem here, unless its only one part who is having his/her first experience.

Condoms are 99% sure and even after that there are several things you can do to avoid an unwanted pregnancy. as I have allready listed

@ Chandos, in ancient greece the 25 years are quite misguiding, since its pulled down by a somewhat hey childdeath rate and birthbad death rate. Men was actually first allowed to marry when they turned 30, in archaic athens they where allowed around 25 but not allowed to life with the woman until the man turne 30. the reason being that 30 was the year a man was legally political active.
women on the other hand got married away around the af age of 13 and seldom lifed to more then 25.

In Rome before christianity women had a lot of freedom, there was no rule that said a woman had to virgin when she married and she could get divorced if the man broke certain rules.

she could also inherit money and land, and she had the legal claim on her wedding part, if a divorce happened. secondly she could remarry.
The romans law where quite liberal until the church got power.

 

Interesting Rally. So the "duties" of an adult Jew mean the 613 mitzvots? It strictly means fulfilling religious obligations?

@Equester: Could provide a link to that stuff? Or at least tell us your source? It seems ridiculously hard to believe any society would have such rules. Pre-marital anal sex is OK? It's OK to get pregnant if your husband is "far away"? While it is certainly true that the life expectancy in ancient Greece of 25 years is heavily influenced by high child and infant mortality rates, the fact that it was so low would have made restricting marriage in males to the age of 30 unrealistic - unless they were allowed to have children prior to marriage.

 

i nsurgest you read "greece in making" by robert osbourne, a standard universety book for the study of ancient greece, but if you compare it with the roman society for instance, a man couldn't seat in the senate until he was 30 either (allthough there was exceptions to this) and it was quite normal for elder men to marry quite young girls.
as i wrote the males could marry earlier and have sex, the athenian law said 25 (or 26) but they couldn't life with the wife until they turned 30. im fairly certain this law both in polis and in the rural areas has been broken by the poor and middle class.
http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/consortium/ancientweddings1.html
here is a link about greek marriages and why the male often where 30.

as for the sources for the different danish laws, that will have to wait until tomorrow where i can get the hands on the danish historie book. but i believe its from a passage in Saxo's danish historie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxo)

if you read the link on saxo you can probably guess he is not the best source, but he is one of the few accounts we have on written material about vikings.
the lok children was a term used in the 1700. and 1800. danish churchbooks, it was used in the "inner mission" and bapteism parts of jutland, i really doubt i can find an english or any internetlink to this
what you must undestand is two things, first denmark was never a particulary good christian country, secondly when the majority of the women most likely where unfaithfull in these fishermen societies, its very hard to judge them

 

Aldeth - My historical sources claim that in ancient Greece only 4 people in one-hundred lived to the age of fifty. And pre-marital sex was the norm, especially sex with slaves, which went on constantly between both men and women.

 

@CtR - I can certainly believe that. My thoughts (and request of a citation) only applied to Equester's statements, that I felt defied belief. With a life expectancy of 25, I think it is entirely reasonable that the number of people who would have doubled that and lived to be 50 would be few and far between. In fact 4% is higher than I would have predicted. In bringing up infant mortality rates, I wasn't saying that the life expectancy would otherwise be twice as high. I was thinking that if you made it out of early childhood, you'd probably live to be 30 or 35 instead of 25 - not to 50.

And regarding pre-marital sex being the norm, especially with slaves doesn't seem far-fetched either.

The only reason I brought your post into it was to show that it would have been unreasonable to wait so long to get married if you weren't likely to live to that age to begin with. My mistake was that I thought the age 30 was required for marriage, but rather it seems to only have applied to co-habitation, which is more than a little odd to say the least. Evidently you could theoretically be married for 5 years before you were allowed to live together.

 

@Abomination:

Yep, it is. It is also a sin to leave the woman (wife) longing, you know. It's actually a sin to neglect your woman, yep. It's a sin to neglect the man, of course. But it's not about sinning, it's about loving. Love demands to be gentle and caring and not keep the other person needy, right?

Actually, Pope John Paul II stressed that men should make sure their wives were also satisfied instead of just "doing it" and falling asleep. One's got to deal with the foreplay thing and then make sure she also gets to "that point", not only you do.

@Equester:

Actually, a woman could not even hold property in her own name and she was considered eternally underage. I recommend reading a bit about property law in ancient Rome, the structure of family and the position of pater familias (the father of the family, who was the subject of all property rights, simply put the owner of everything and everyone). Putting the woman from father's authority under the husband's involved a similar procedure as conferring property of an item. If your woman slept over at someone's place, you "vindicated" her with the same reivindicational claim you'd use to retrieve a stolen item. It was only in the Christian times when the woman was allowed to become a normal owner and her position improved.

As for premarital sex, it was a criminal offence under Octavian. Adulterium with someone's wife, stuprum with a spinster, both were punishable. As for marriage, it wasn't about freedom of mores, but about the belief that marriage persisted as long as affectio maritalis (the will to be married) did. In Christianity, marriage is perpetual after valid consent. No difference between genders.

And as for whatever you understand by her wedding part, whatever claims she had on her husband's wealth, any property transfer had to be requested and executed by her father and to him the rights went. So yep, you could basically sue your ingrate son-in-law and get back the girl's cash. Lovely, not? If you're interested in more, I can certainly spawn an essay about the position of a woman under Roman law. Ragusa might have studied Roman law for a while also since he's a lawyer too, if you want a more impartial source.

@Chandos:

But only children coming from a legitimate marriage of two citizens were granted citizenship. Children with foreigners and slaves not. Slaves were regarded as items, so it was a matter of using the slave rather than being free to enter into consensual relationships. And well, do you really think female slaves were asked opinion? Or that any court of law or any ruler or anything would protect them? She belonged to him, he took it. Nothing liberal in that.

 

Roman Law

Some excerpts from:

The Twelve Tables, c. 450 BCE

1. Females should remain in guardianship even when they have attained their majority

5. Usucapio of movable things requires one year's possession for its completion; but usucapio of an estate and buildings two years.
6. Any woman who does not wish to be subjected in this manner to the hand of her husband should be absent three nights in succession every year, and so interrupt the usucapio of each year

1. Marriages should not take place between plebeians and patricians.

Doesn't sound like much in the way of freedom to me.
Read the whole thing here

Perhaps some of you are referring to Roman Society at around the time of Julius Caesar when morals had declined.

 

Well, Romans treated Roman citizens fairly well, women did get the short end of the stick but were far more 'free' than woman of many other societies at the time.

Girls would have sex when they started menstrating, boys would have sex when they damn well felt inclinded to. Don't forget that brothels were legal in both the Roman Republic and Empire till Constantine brought in Christianity as the national religion.

 

Actually, there was a sense of morality and, for example, senators' sons were prevented from marrying actresses (typically regarded as dissolute and probably not without grounds at that time) looong before Justinian. Citizenship was conferred on children from marriage, also, like in Greece, so the fact they weren't all very virtuous doesn't mean it was all that okay.

 

Although it should be pointed out that this was a political ploy--Octavian accused the Senators/equestrians/rich folk of loose morals, corruption, etc, etc. So he appealed to the public on the basis of, among other things, 'restoring virtue'.

Which would tend to indicate things were at least perceived to be more liberal in the period before Octavian's ascension.

But, frankly, anyone looking to the Romans for morality is going to be disappointed. Slavery, women-as-property (essentially, anyway), naked imperial conquest, bloodsport for entertainment, politics invovling lots of assassinations/pointing the 'mob' at your opponent...

I could go on.

 

Or he might have had some obsession. At any rate, he forced Livia to divorce her husband to marry him, so I really doubt the sincerity of his motives. Unless he was insanse, which he might have been. Haven't all of them emperors save a few? The public morality in the late republic was lax for sure. Not like the early emperor's courts were that great. In fact, much worse than most of the republic's excesses. I doubt Octavian's own was that great, either.

 

Women of the Patrician class were usually married at age 12-14. So of course they had sex. If you mean they were free to have sex with whomever they pleased I would like to see the citation.

Under the Republic women of the patrician class stayed pretty much to home. The paterfamilias had total control over his household. He could sell his children and possibly had the right to kill any member of his household.

As far as women's rights went in the Mediterranean region they didn't begin to compare with the rights of women in Northern Europe and the British isles in the pre-Christian era. Rights might vary from area to area but the Women of the Nords and Celts were pretty much equal to the men as Equester has already pointed out at least in respect to the Nords.

 

I did not say there was, nor did I mean to imply that. In fact, slaves were playthings for the upper classes in ancient Greece, especially young males, who were highly desired by both sexes. The upper classes have always been exclusive, while a large, cheap work force is always desired by them, for obvious reasons - the more slaves, the better (for them). If you happen to be one of the slaves, well...

I also wanted to stress that Christianity was a break-through religion for the times, with its notion that every human person was equal in God's eyes and had value, regardless of birth or class. This was something different for the ancient world, but it did not affect it till after the birth of Christ, of course. While the great power of Christianity is Christ Himself, there are the beginnings of liberalism in the perspective of human equality. Christianity was mostly a "liberalizing" force in many other ways as well, IMO.

[ February 23, 2007, 04:36: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

@aldeth, the reason legaly why they werent allowed to life together until the male turned 30 has to do with him proving he was a good citizen, that included military service (since the city states was in a near constant status of war) and some for us at least wierd traditions of showing care for the dead of ones family.
a young man was required to be able to show proof of him visiting his family's graves often and taking care of them to be considered a good citizen.

As for women rights in the miditarenean it varies a lot both from rich to poor and from area to area.

remember egypt was ruled several times by women, while the commen woman in that country seldom had much to say. unless she held some priestly office.

as for Rome, i wonder where Chev got the idea that women couldn't own property. A divorced women whos father was dead for instance held full legal rights over her marriage money and could certenly buy a house or rent a place for that money.

the virgins of vesta was given a big pension when they retired and had also full right, much like marriage money, to use them as they saw fit.

Secondly, wives of legionairs and aristocraty and probably merchants too, ruled the house and often the mans buisness when he was away.
and a wife of a legionair was intitled to his share of the loot should he die

in greece rich women could also hold high position and command both athority and have money.
try reading a bit odd source, namely the new testamoney for instace, the deeds of the apostle, especially chapter 17-18 mention some prominent women.
or if you look at this wonderfull source, found on delos in the artemis temple
pic: http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Arts/kore/NikanderInscription.jpg
page: http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Arts/Kore.htm

the farshooter the inscription referse to, is on ancient greek written in femininum which is sadly lost in the translation, the farshooter is artemis and nikandre was a priest and quite rich, since she could afford a 1.75m statue to be delivered to delos from naxos and had it dedicated in her name

[ February 23, 2007, 15:39: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

 

If only that principle would have been held in practice. Slavery disappeared but was replaced with serfdom, not much of an improvement if you ask me.

 

slavery didn't disappear with christianity, for a long time, while the roman impire was christian slavery was still legal, and when christian european explores discovered africa, the pope was such a nice guy, that he allowed slavery of this "lesser" race.

christianity was only liberal and equal when it had no real power, almost as soon as it ascended as the roman state religion, it became very conservative, which started several silly wars.

the catholic/orthodox break for instance.
even today people arent equel in the eyes for the Catholic church, for instance a priest is apperently closer to god then a normal man and the pope is of cause the closest a man can get to god.

 

From studying Roman law. Whatever a woman did, she needed her family head for that or at least a curator the same as minors. With the difference that a minor could already be family head, while a woman not ever. The situation of women under the law improved later on but in the classical period (that is the late republic and early empire) they were subordinate family members, perpetually underage. I wonder where you are getting some strange social-like ideas to deny the law the Romans had at the time we're talking about.