ABSTRACT
The Hammurabi Code recognized as legally binding a marriage contracted between an unfree man and a free-born woman; and although the former, with all his possessions, was legally the property of his master, the children born of such a marriage were free. The children of master and slave were freed after the father's death. The Gortynian Code allowed regular marriages not only between individuals of equal status free or serf but also between a free woman and a man who was not free: but not, however, it would appear, between a free man and an unfree woman, since no mention is made of the possibility. Since the marriage relationship between slaves did not exist, there is good reason to suppose that opuien was not used of a relationship between a free woman and a slave. Greek history affords a number of famous examples of the free-woman-serf relationship, on the colonization of Lokroi Epizephyrioi.
