Marriage

====Germanic tribes====
[[File:Seuso and his wife at Lake Balaton.jpg|thumb|Seuso and his wife]]

Among ancient [[Germanic peoples|Germanic]] tribes, the bride and groom were roughly the same age and generally older than their Roman counterparts, at least according to [[Tacitus]]:
<blockquote>The youths partake late of the pleasures of love, and hence pass the age of puberty unexhausted: nor are the virgins hurried into marriage; the same maturity, the same full growth is required: the sexes unite equally matched and robust, and the children inherit the vigor of their parents.<ref>Tacitus (by commentator Edward Brooks). 2013. [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7524/7524-h/7524-h.htm#link2H_4_0002 The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus]. Project Gutenberg. Footnotes 121–122.</ref></blockquote>
Where [[Aristotle]] had set the prime of life at 37 years for men and 18 for women, the [[Visigothic Code|Visigothic Code of law]] in the 7th century placed the prime of life at 20 years for both men and women, after which both presumably married. Tacitus states that ancient Germanic brides were on average about 20 and were roughly the same age as their husbands.<ref>Herlihy, David. (1985). ''Medieval Households''. Harvard University Press, pp. 73–5, {{ISBN|0-674-56376-X}}.</ref> Tacitus, however, had never visited the German-speaking lands and most of his information on [[Germania]] comes from secondary sources. In addition, [[Anglo-Saxons|Anglo-Saxon]] women, like those of other Germanic tribes, are marked as women from the age of 12 and older, based on archaeological finds, implying that the age of marriage coincided with [[puberty]].<ref>Green, Dennis Howard and Siegmund, Frank. 2003. ''The Continental Saxons from the Migration Period to the Tenth Century''. Boydell Press. p. 107</ref>