to bequeath her by will, as well as her mother, who was assimilated, like her, to chattels or property. "Demosthenes, my father, bequeathed his fortune, which was fourteen talents, myself, aged seven years, my sister, aged five years, and our mother. At the moment of dying, when asked what he would have done with us, he bequeathed all these things to this Aphobus and to Demophontes, his nephews; he married my sister to Demophontes, and gave at once two talents."[1] "In the same way," says Demosthenes again, "Pasion dying, bequeathed his wife to Phormion."[2] It might happen that the daughter or the wife were by law one body with the estate. Thus a daughter, in default of male heirs, belonged to the relation who would have inherited in her stead and place, if she had not lived.
If there were several relatives in the same degree of succession, the daughter was to marry the eldest of them. Further still, she was obliged in this case to quit her husband, if previously, and even with paternal authorisation, she had contracted marriage.[3] In Greece, to safeguard or conquer her independence, a woman had no other resources than the seduction of her sex and the love she could inspire. She had early recourse to these defensive weapons, for Aristotle thinks it his duty to put young men on guard against the excess of conjugal tenderness and feminine tyranny, the habit which enchains the man to his wife.[4] At length in Greece, as it had happened in Egypt, money finished by protecting the woman much more efficaciously, and even by giving her sometimes the advantage on the conjugal field of battle. Solon, who knew Egypt, began by decreeing the absolute poverty of the married woman. "The bride was to bring with her only three suits of clothes, and some household stuff of small value, for he wished marriages to be made without mercenary or venal views, and would have that union cemented by love and friendship, and not by money."[5] But this primitive legislation could not stand against the combined action of the affection of the girl's parents, her own desire of independence, and lastly, the cupidity of the husband, and
