Rome

In Virgil's Aeneid there is a love story that involves our main character Aeneas and Dido, the queen of Carthage. In the story they fall in love and while on a hunting trip they get separated from the rest of their party in a cave where they end up making love. Dido considers a marriage to have taken place even though no marriage ceremony has been preformed. Once Mercury comes down and talks to Aeneas and gets him back on track to his destiny, Aeneas does not hesitate to choose destiny over a marriage to and staying with Dido. this suggest that there are definitely things in Roman society that are more important than marriage and that includes destiny. this also shows that for the most part sex is something that is seen as something that primarily happens in marriage relationships. We also learn that for a marriage to be considered as having taken place there must be an actual marriage ceremony. Like today there are certain steps that one must take to be considered married in society.

Classical Greece

In the artwork of Classical Greece we don't see husbands and wives together, suggesting that this part of life isn't as important to the people of classical Greece as it has been to other previous cultures. But we do know from Oedipus Rex that marriage was part of life in Classical Greece and there are certain guidelines for what an appropriate marriage is. In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus is very distraught when he hears from the oracle that not only will he kill his father but he will also marry his mother. He was determined to make sure that this would not happen so he got as far away from who he thought were his biological parents. When he finds out that he in fact had killed his father and married his mother he was so upset that he gouged his eyes out. This suggest that there were some guidelines to marriage and of these guidelines included not marrying your parents.

Early Greece

A commonly known fact is that the peoples of ancient Greece were polytheistic. They had gods for all the different aspects of life and they often made temples to honor and worship and their god. Some of the temples withstood the tests of time and one of these was in the Temple of Hera. Hera we have learned is the goddess of women and marriage. This means that women and marriage held some importance in the society of the early Greeks because they built such a large temple out of lasting material. If women and marriage held absolutely no importance to Greek society then they wouldn't have built a temple for the goddess of women and marriage.

Egypt

During the time that Akhenaton was ruling Egypt their was a stone relief made of him, his wife Nefertiti, and three of their children. Marriage often leads to the creating of families and it was obviously a big part of Egyptian life, at least to Akhenaton, since there is a stone relief depicting his family. One of the very noticeable things in this artwork is the hierarchy of scale. Hierarchy of scale was a very popular tool that was used in Egyptian artwork and architecture to help show the importance of different individuals. In Akhenaton, Nefertiti, and Three of Their Children it is very obvious that children are still deem as less important. On the other hand, Nefertiti is shown on the same scale as Akhenaton, implying that she has a more equal role in their marriage.

Ancient Near East

The Law Code of Hammurabi is the piece of work I would like to discuss that comes from the Ancient Near East. In the law Code of Hammurabi there are several laws written that pertain to marriage. Having laws that pertain to marriage means that marriage is an important part of life in the culture of the Babylonians. Husbands are obviously seen as more important because when they commit trespasses in a marriage their punishments are less severe than punishments that the wifes receive for the same crime. But it is also important to take note that the Law Code also does cover rights that wives have in marriage. This is indicative of the fact that wives are not total second class citizens with absolutely no rights. They do have some value in society even if they aren't as highly valued as their husbands.

Humanities 201

So this is my blog I'm starting for my humanities 201 class at BYU. We are expected to keep a theme throughout the semester and one of the formats is blog style so here I am! Seeing as I am getting married in May I figure the appropriate theme for my theme journal would be marriage. Over the course of the semester I will be providing blog entries talking about pieces of work that have to do with marriage. I will be including pieces of work from time periods including:
Ancient Near East
Egypt
Early Greece
Classical Greece
Rome
Early Christian
Byzantine
Islam
Early Medieval
Romanesque
Gothic
Fourteenth Century
Renaissance

I hope everyone is so excited to read my theme journal cause this might be pretty much the only blogging you see me do this semester because I rarely update my other blog.