Marriage

====Classical Greece and Rome====
{{see also|Marriage in ancient Rome|Ancient Greek wedding customs}}

In [[ancient Greece]], no specific civil ceremony was required for the creation of a heterosexual marriage – only mutual agreement and the fact that the couple must regard each other as husband and wife accordingly.<ref name="WILLIAMSON 1998">{{Cite book |last=WILLIAMSON |first=MALCOLM |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YvvJtcFkRpcC |title=The Sacred and the Feminine in Ancient Greece |date=1998 |publisher=Psychology Press |isbn=978-0-415-12663-2 |language=en}}</ref> Men usually married when they were in their 20s and women in their teens.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Greek Women: Marriage and Divorce|url=https://www.pbs.org/empires/thegreeks/background/43.html|access-date=2021-06-28|website=www.pbs.org}}</ref> It has been suggested that these ages made sense for the Greeks because men were generally done with military service or financially established by their late 20s, and marrying a teenage girl ensured ample time for her to bear children, as life expectancies were significantly lower.{{Citation needed|date=October 2012}} Married Greek women had few rights in ancient Greek society and were expected to take care of the house and children.{{Citation needed|date=August 2010}} Time was an important factor in Greek marriage. For example, there were superstitions that being married during a [[full moon]] was good luck and Greeks married in the winter in honor of Hera.<ref name="WILLIAMSON 1998"/> Inheritance was more important than feelings: a woman whose father dies without male heirs could be forced to marry her nearest male relative – even if she had to divorce her husband first.<ref name="PT">[http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20170601170518/https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200505/marriage%2Dhistory "Marriage, a History."] ''Psychology Today'', 1 May 2005</ref>

There were several types of marriages in ancient Roman society. The traditional ("conventional") form called ''conventio in manum'' required a ceremony with witnesses and was also dissolved with a ceremony.<ref name="magnusHirschfeldSexology">{{cite web |url=http://sexarchive.info/ATLAS_EN/html/history_of_marriage_in_western.html |title=Magnus Hirschfeld Archive of Sexology |publisher=Erwin J. Haeberle }}</ref> In this type of marriage, a woman lost her family rights of inheritance of her old family and gained them with her new one. She now was subject to the authority of her husband.<ref>Frier and McGinn, ''Casebook'', p. 53.</ref> There was the free marriage known as ''sine manu''. In this arrangement, the wife remained a member of her original family; she stayed under the authority of her father, kept her family rights of inheritance with her old family and did not gain any with the new family.<ref name="RomanEmpireMarriage">{{cite web |url=http://www.roman-empire.net/society/soc-marriage.html |title=Roman empire.net marriage |publisher=Roman-empire.net  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090212170628/http://www.roman-empire.net/society/soc-marriage.html |archive-date=12 February 2009 }}</ref> The minimum age of marriage for girls was 12.<ref>{{cite book|author=Treggiari, Susan |title=Roman Marriage: Isusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I0J1A6o4GuQC&pg=PA39|year=1993|publisher=Clarendon Press|isbn=978-0-19-814939-2|page=39}}</ref>