Spartan women contracted marriage relatively later than their contemporaries from other regions of ancient Greece. While Athenian girls used to get married for the first time at around fourteen, the Spartans married around 18 with men of about the same age. From the age of seven, children had to leave for military camps with the purpose of becoming a Spartan, so that until around the age of 30, they are forced to sneak out of the camps to find and see their wives. The absence of men in the family nucleus gave the married woman greater freedom and more responsibilities. They became owners of the house and were in charge of family belongings while their husbands were away; unlike in other states of the time, the Spartan woman could travel outside the home without restriction.
In Athens, when a father died without leaving a will and without male children, his widow had no choice but marriage. The law forced her to marry one of the relatives, but not in the ascending line. If the heiress was poor (thessa), she married a single close relative or someone suitable for her rank. When there were several heirs, the closest one had priority (see epilogue). In fact, the heiress, along with her inheritance, belonged to the relatives of the family, so much so that in ancient times a father could not give his daughter (if she was an heiress) in marriage without the consent of the other members of the family. family.18 This was not the case, however, of later Athenian laws, which allowed a father to dispose of his daughter, according to his own will; as were the widows who were given in marriage according to her husband's testamentary wishes, since these were considered their legitimate representatives (kyrioi).
The same custom of marrying in the family (oikos), especially in the case of the heiresses, was also in force in Sparta. Leonidas I married the heiress of Cleomenes I, as his anchisteia, or closest relative, and Anaxándridas II, with his sister's daughter. In addition, if a father had not established anything regarding the daughter, it was the courts that decided who should be the privileged, among the members of the same family, to marry the heiress, similar to the Athens law concerning the heiresses are also found in the Jewish code, as detailed in the Numbers (c. XXVII, 1-11), and exemplified in Ruth (chap. IV).
