Word: greeke
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...With abundant gold are we constrained to buy a husband," lamented Euripedes' Medea in a sigh of woe that is as valid today as it was 2,500 years ago. No fewer than 32 articles of the modern Greek civil code govern and define the antique institution of the dowry -the practice of bestowing a property settlement on a daughter as an inducement to marriage. Now, however, Greece's time-honored system of mandatory dowries is under attack. Legislative pressure for its abolition comes chiefly from the seven women in Greece's 300-member Parliament. A draft...
According to Greek law, daughters can even sue fathers who ignore the dowry obligation. The woman retains ownership of her dowry-but the husband has all the rights to its use. In the words of one feminist critic, he "spends, invests, does with the interest as he pleases. The dowry puts the woman on the auction block." On the other hand, it can also provide a beleaguered wife with some measure of leverage in her marriage, since she gets back the original stake in the event of a divorce...
Daughter's Dowry. Reluctance to abolish the dowry is more than a matter of male chauvinist greed. Says Bruce Lansdale, an American sociologist who has lived in Greece for 30 years: "The dowry is just as important as birth and death in Greek family life. For some girls it is a ticket off the farm to the big city. These days, if a farmer saves enough to buy an apartment in the city, it becomes the daughter's dowry and attracts a young engineer, mechanic or construction worker." But for a poor parent with many daughters...
Aeschylus' Oresteia: The Classical Greek Trilogy of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra and Orestes. A new adaptation directed by Joann Green and performed by the Cambridge Ensemble at 115 Mass Ave. Playing Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm through Feb. 26. Tickets are $3 and $4. For info, call...
...illustrious predecessors: the Greek poet Pindar (circa 500 B.C.) wrote an ode without using the letter sigma. Lewis Carroll, an Oxford mathematician better known for the Alice books, liked to mix the logic of numbers with the freedom of dreams. In this century, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, e.e. cummings and Vladimir Nabokov all enjoyed the pleasures of arithmetic while exploring the peripheries of language. But it was not until 1960 that the newly formed OuLiPo officiated at the shotgun wedding of science and literature. Its first and still most remarkable product was Cent Milie Milliards de Poems (A Hundred Thousand...