Epikleros

In mythology and history, a number of Greek women appear to have been epikleroi, including Agariste of Sicyon and Agiatis, the widow of the Spartan king Agis IV.

In most ancient Greek city states, women could not own property,[1] and so a system was devised to keep ownership within the male-defined family line.

Epikleroi' were required to marry the nearest relative on their father's side of the family, a system of inheritance known as the epiklerate.

[2] Although epikleros is often mistranslated as "heiress",[3] strictly speaking the terms are not equivalent, as the woman never owned the property and so was unable to dispose of it.

Athenian law on epikleroi was attributed to Solon; women with no brothers had to marry their nearest male relative on their paternal side of the family, starting with their father's brother and moving from there to the next nearest male relative on the paternal side.

[11] A speech by Isaeus, a 4th-century BCE speechwriter,[16] rests on the claim that the speaker's mother only became an epikleros after her young brother died following their father's death.

[21] It is unclear whether or not the nearest relative had the power to dissolve an epikleros' previous marriage in order to marry her himself in all cases.

[2][21] It may have been Solon who legislated that if the new spouse was unable to fulfill his thrice monthly duties to his wife, she was entitled to have sex with his next of kin so that she could produce an heir to her father's property.

[28] A young Athenian male, prior to coming of age and serving his time as an ephebe, or military trainee, was allowed to claim epikleroi, the only legal right an ephebe was permitted in Aristotle's day,[22] besides that of taking office as a priest in an hereditary priesthood.

[39] Other historians, including Sarah Pomeroy, feel that the children of an epikleros were considered to transmit the paternal grandfather's oikos.

[40] The historian Cynthia Patterson agrees, arguing that adoption may have seemed unnecessary, especially if the epikleros and her husband gave their son the name of the maternal grandfather.

She argues that too much attention has been paid to the patrilineal aspects of the oikos, and that there was probably less emphasis on this in actual Athenian practice and more on keeping a household together as a productive unit.

[41] The historian Roger Just states the main principle of the epiklerate was that no man could become the guardian of the property without also becoming the husband of the epikleros.

Just sees the development of the epiklerate as flowing from Solon's desire to keep the number of Athenian households constant.

[20] Taking as a wife an epikleros who had little estate was considered a praiseworthy action, and was generally stressed in public speeches.

This dowry was in addition to her own property and the requirement was designed to ensure that even poor heiresses found husbands.

[46][c] Modern estimates of the odds of an Athenian woman becoming an epikleros say that roughly one out of seven fathers died without biological sons.

[47] However, Athenian law allowed for a man to adopt another male as a son in his will, so not all daughters without brothers would have become epikleroi.

Most modern historians have come to the conclusion that this was only required if the epikleros had not yet had a son that could inherit the grandfather's estate.

The clearest evidence is from the Roman playwright Terence, in his play Adelphoe, which includes a plot element involving a claim that a girl is actually an epikleros.

[53][54] In Sparta the law of epikleros only applied to unmarried girls,[2] and the Spartan kings were responsible for finding spouses for epikleroi who had not been betrothed before their father's death.

[55] Herodotus, in his list of Spartan royal prerogatives, said: "The kings are the sole judges of these cases only: concerning an unmarried heiress, to whom it pertains to have [her], if her father has not bethrothed her",[56] but the exact meaning of this statement is debated.

The city-states of Naupactus and Thermus allowed women to inherit property, but whether or not the daughters were considered epikleroi is unknown from the surviving fragments of the laws from those cities.

[60] Plato, in his Laws, set forth rules that governed not the ideal state, which he described in The Republic, but what he felt might be obtainable in the real world.

In general outline, they conformed to Athenian practice, with the daughter of a man who died without male heirs becoming an epikleros.

In that case, Plato assigned the inheritance not to one person, but to a pair, one male and one female, and ordered that they must marry and provide an heir to the estate, much like the epikleros.

This is in striking contrast to Solon's legislation, which was concerned with the internal affairs of the family and its external manifestations in public life.

[7] In the tales of heroic Greece, royal succession often passed from father-in-law to son-in-law, and some historians have seen in this an early example of the epikleros pattern.

[50] In literature, Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus, would be considered an epikleros, and her uncle Creon would have been responsible for her marriage as well as that of her sister Ismene.

[79] Alexis, Antiphanes, Diodorus, Diphilus, Euetes, and Heniokhos all wrote comedies titled Epikleros, although none are extant.