Marriages in Ancient Greece wasn’t always, one of the most important days of your life, In Athens marriage was looked at as it was an arrangement between families rather than a matter of personal choice for the bride and groom. Even though in Sparta, marriage was actually based on love and commitment. “Arranged marriages were the norm; the only women who sometimes had an element of choice were widows.” (William, 1996, p. 383) In Sparta women usually married when they were eighteen years of age to a man that is around twenty-five , unlike in Athens where the women, you could even refer to them as girls were forced or married between ages fourteen and eighteen. Even though most men in Athens did not marry till they were around thirty. “Women married late by Greek standards, when they were 18 or over, to men aged about 25.” (Fiona, 1999, p. 35) Athenian women usually wouldn't meet their husbands until the day of their marriage, although in Sparta things were very different. In Sparta, after a short friendly physical fight between the bride and the groom, the groom won, if the bride wished to be married. in Athens, people were married after dark and the ceremony started with a veiled bride travelling from her home to her future husband's home. She had to stand in a slow moving chariot or cart or some wheeled vehicle all the way. "Before her wedding a bride bathed in water, ideally from a holy spring. Women slaves or her mother and sisters perfumed her, helped her to dress and made her look her best." (Fiona, 1999, p. 12) Marriages in both Sparta and Athens were a world away from each other, caused by the governments actions taken out on their lands.
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