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Sunday, April 06, 2008

The Rape Of The Bride

« "Похищение сабинянок" Джамболоньи» на Яндекс.Фотках

What you see here on the photo represents a story about The Rape of the Sabine Women that happened when the first Romans had to find wives for them.

In shot:
A group of young men began to live on the hills where there is Rome today. It was normal practice in that time. When the tribe could not give to eat to all the population, all young men born in the same year -the year chosen by oracle- had to go away. Greeks gave them a boat and an older man as a guide. Those who lived on the territory of Italy gave them a bull and they had to build a new village where the bull will stop. Sometimes it was a bird, not a bull. A totemic animal.

Well, the group of those teppists, that began to live on the Rome hills, needed wives. They organized a great feast for their neighbours, sabins, and when the neighbours were drunked, took all the women and went home.

The story finished good because the women did then so that their first husbands were content.

That story happened about 750 BC.

When I was a student at the university, in Caucasus, these usages were alive in that region else.
They have strange for European mentality habits.
If the girl remained with a man, it means she has to marry this man or she is not a honoured woman more, and all her family and the group of families of relatives of this family are dishonoured. Wants or non wants the girl, was something with this man or there were not sexual relations with him -this is not interesting for anybody. She is dishonoured. Point.

Sometimes the girl goes to the man because she really wants to marry him, but the parents do not want it. Something like Romeo and Juliet. In this case there is nothing to ad.

During my studies a group of young men raped one of our girls, took her inside the carpet home, she rested there closed in a room for some days. After that the men left her. The poor girl could not marry her loved one and the family moved in Russia because they could not live in this place more. Practically, the love and the life of the girl was destroyed.

It's real story. I don't remember today, WHY they did it, because they did not want that poor girl. Maybe it was revenge. In other cases this story could finish with blood feud.

Why I remembered this usage?
An article writes that the government of Dagestan asked Duma of Russian Federation to ad a new law, where the rape for marriage will be announced as a crime. Duma said No.

Well, what is interesting for me: the article writes why this usage was so popular.
The man had to ask the parents of the girl to marry her.
The father had to say no.
The man had to "rape" the girl.
The man with the father had to bargain the price of the girl.
And when the girl was paid, she was married.
So it was to justify the paiment of the wife.

All this originally was a part of the marriage feast.

Very old sovietic comedy about uncle that want to marry the nephew with an old man, steels her and here the thieves, engaged by uncle, try to maintain the girl in good mood because the old man has to come. The uncle speaks on phone.

The song says: how many wives would I have if I was a sultan? 3. But it's too difficult to have 3 of them. So, what is better, 3 or 1? Sincerely, if I would be sultan, I would be not married.

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