XVII For all that, the marriage bond is strict, and no feature in their mode of life is more creditable to them than this. Unlike the great majority of barbarians, they are content with one wife: very few of them have more than one, and these few exceptions are not due to wantonness; they are cases of men of high rank, to whom several matrimonial alliances have been offered from motives of policy. The wife does not bring a dowry to
her husband; on the contrary, he offers one to her. This part of the affair is arranged by her parents and kinsmen, and they pass judgment on the wedding gifts, which are no toys collected to suit feminine frivolities or adorn a bride; instead of that, they consist of oxen, and a bridled horse, and shield and spear and sword. These are the presents that await her as a wife, and her own wedding present to her husband in return is a gift of arms. This is the strongest bond of union - this the mystery of marriage; these are their gods of wedded life. Lest the woman should think that masculine courage and the perils of war lie beyond her sphere, these tokens remind her upon the threshold of marriage that she comes as the man's partner in toils and dangers; and that in peace and in war she must expect to suffer and to dare the same. This is the signification of the oxen in the yoke, of the harnessed horse, of the offering of arms. Thus is she bound to live and thus to die. She receives what she is to hand on to her sons, inviolate and unprofaned; what her sons' wives are to receive after her, and they, in their turn, to hand on to her children's children.
Tacitus accounts of Germania, 98 AD
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