Are you a single lady aged 14-22 looking for a man with good prospects to settle down with? We specialize in connecting women with lonely cleruchic soldiers aged 28-48 who want to start a family. We guarantee that with our service you'll find a husband and have at least a few children before one of you dies or you get divorced, or your MONEY BACK. And we don’t just help teenage girls looking to marry for the first time! We can also help if you are a mature widow or divorcee looking for someone to spend your twilight years with ^[We ^are ^not ^liable ^for ^any ^difficulty ^an ^you ^may ^have ^in ^finding ^a ^suitor].
Hellenic women across Egypt are taking advantage of the relative scarcity of Greek women compared to the volume of Greek male soldiers ready to marry. Don't miss out! Ensure you have someone to support you in old age!
But don't just take our word for it, listen to this success story from a real former user:
“Hi, I'm Apollonia (located 30 km south of Thebes) but my friends and family sometimes call me Senmonthis. I was in my late teens and my family was anxious to see me marry ^1 but finding a suitable husband who can support me financially and is agreeable to my family and I would be tough. Coming from a military family as I did, I was confident that my prospects were better than not, even if my “Cyrenean” family was as Egyptianised as it was Hellenised ^2 . And then I met a Cretan named Dryton son of Pamphilus (located in Ptolemais). The moment I saw his scarred Greek face ^3 , properly Hellenised grooming and obviously well off background, I knew he was the one. He had an affection for love poetry. Poems about heartache and passion, all that mush that these Greek writers love ^4 . We ended up having five daughters before our divorce after roughly 22 years of marriage. ^5 Dryton tells me that back in Crete, families “dispose of” excess infant daughters to avoid embarrassment and because their dowries are too expensive. I can’t imagine that, Honestly, my independent nature and personal involvement in business might have helped to contribute to tensions between us, and I wouldn't be surprised if other aspects of his Greek upbringing left him unprepared for a wife like me, but it was still a pretty good run. Dryton ended up leaving me nothing of his estate which included four slaves (four! How Greek ^6 ), and private cultivated land, even vineyards. He bequeathed everything to his son from a previous marriage and our daughters, in that order. I definitely didn’t see that one coming! ^7 Lucky I had means of my own since I was an accomplished businesswoman, I never once borrowed money!"
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We offer Demotic marriage contracts, so you can take full advantage of Egyptian law and enjoy both the right to have a personal say in personal legal matters, and guaranteed compensation if your husband divorces you without cause. Greek marriage contracts are also offered, although please ensure you have a living male relative or close friend of the family to act as kyrios, legal guardian.
Citations: Keep them coming back for more!
^1 Apollonia's exact age is unknown, but based on the timeframe in which she had her children, and the average marriage for women in Hellenistic Egypt, she was likely somewhere between her mid teens and early twenties.
^2 It is a matter of some debate if Apollonia’s family were Cyreneans (from modern day Libya) who emigrated to Egypt at least a century before and adopted Egyptian naming conventions or Egyptians who were given the psuedo-ethnic “Cyrenean” upon entry into the military. Regardless, it is clear that they had a connection to both Greek and Egyptian culture by this point.
^3 An earlier contract which records a loan Dryton took out as a young man describes him as fair-skinned with a hook nose, bristled hair and a scar on his right eyebrow. He was a Cretan, which is unremarkable given the heavy amount of Cretan immigration to Ptolemais.
^4 The “Alexandrian Erotic Fragment” is a fragment of a copied love poem which was owned by a young Dryton. It is pretty standard, melodramatic stuff about someone trying to win back their lover. The plot twist is that unlike most Hellenistic love poetry, the aching, love-enslaved protagonist is a woman this time:
I am about to go mad. Passion grips me.
And I burn, being abandoned...
Sir, do not leave me locked out.
Receive me. I am happy and anxious to be your slave.
^5 Families in ancient Greece engaged in a kind of family planning by exposing female infants. Part of the reason for this was that many families could not afford to pay the dowries for multiple daughters whereas sons could help support a family. Egypt by contrast did not have a culture of commonplace female infanticide, much to the surprise of Graeco-Roman commentators. Interestingly, Dryton’s hometown of Ptolemais provides some of our only references to infanticide although it was certainly practiced during this time period.
^6 Unlike what movies would have you believe, slavery was a quintessentially un-Egyptian practice, but the Greek immigrants to Egypt during the Hellenistic period maintained domestic slaves if they could afford it.
^7 Wills from Ptolemaic Egypt almost always bequeath something to wives, but Dryton apparently provided the most to his son and then after that, he left property to his daughters. Dryton’s will ensured that Apollonia did receive a stipend but only for four years, and as support for her raising their youngest two daughters. Fortunately for Apollonia, she really was as financially successful as she claims.