These types of marriages were either commonly practiced (or recently made obsolete) around the fifth century. To understand fifth century practices, it is necessary to take a step back and review the history of marriage in Greece, for Sappho, who flourished in the seventh century B.C., drew on patterns of marriage that were as much mythological as sociological, or legal, and for whom marriage as an institution triggered personal responses.Pandora was the first bride,9 as well as the first woman. Didomi, the word meaning to give, from which Pandora's name is derived, reflects that the bride was originally a free gift that came to the groom's home bearing gifts. Leduc explains the importance of the bride-gift:
The free gift was, I believe, the organizing principle of the Hellenic system of legitimate reproduction. From the eighth to the fourth century B.C. a woman was always given (didomi) to her husband by another man, and this man always gave other riches (epididomi) along with her.10
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