TL;DR: I'm going to, perhaps unsatisfyingly, argue that the concept of a girlfriend both very much was, but also perhaps very much wasn't, a thing in Classical Greece. Indeed, while we might find a temptingly natural translation for the concept in hetaera (literally companion), we would perhaps struggle at least as much to explain what you really mean when you reference the status of 'girlfriend' to Solon the Lawgiver as we do today understanding what he would have really meant by 'hetaera'. THIS COMMENT CONTAINS FRANK DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN THE CLASSICAL WORLD.

I think that it is worth noting both how astonishingly easy and how astonishingly difficult it is to meaningfully address your question. It is oddly easy because we have a remarkable amount of documentation, particularly from Athens, addressing the subject in the form of contemporary plays dramatizing it, judicial records fighting about it, as well as rich dudes directly musing about it - trying to build models to understand it. That history of privileged dudes trying to dissect the status of women in Classical Greece stretches from the orator Appolodorous to Descartes to the present day. However, it is also notably difficult in that there was a continuity of human experience in how both men and women navigated sex and reproduction that also stretches from Appolodorous to Descartes but which has perhaps since been broken to a remarkable degree in relatively recent history. Indeed, the continuing abolition of slavery, increasing access to competitive labor markets for women, state institutions keeping comprehensive records on the statuses of their citizens, and the introduction of accessible and effective birth control have radically changed the contexts of these labels. If the past is a foreign country, the context that your Classical Greek everyman navigated was very foreign indeed. However, as I'll return to, it is also incredibly present to varying degrees for many of us opening this thread.

For many Classical authors, there were very clearly two kinds of women and an unambiguous distinction between the two. There were the wives who were wedded according to the laws who, for those who could afford the expense involved, would be as unseen by the rest of the polis as possible. Under [the laws of Draco in ancient Greece (621BCE)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draco_(lawgiver)), where we get the term draconian today, any man who caught another man sexually violating (adultering, moicheía, μοιχεία) his wife could legally kill that man with the same legal immunity as an athlete who accidentally killed someone in competition ^(DEM23.53). Consent, or even any action or feelings on the part of the woman in question, were perfectly immaterial to moicheía, a crime that one man committed against another. Indeed, in addition to being able to just get some friends together and safely jump him while he was indisposed on the toilet Pulp Fiction style, Draco also allowed the aggrieved man to capture the adulterer and inflict whatever tortures he imagined so long as he didn’t use a knife ^(DEM59.66). While we know that in practice this extraordinary immunity often resulted in a private extortion of exorbitant amounts of money from the adulterer in exchange for publicly forfeiting that immunity, it also formed the basis for some really fascinating trials exploring their distinction between these 'two kinds of women'. Indeed, Under the laws of Solon (594BCE) as well as later codes, this legal vengeance only applied to wives (as well as concubines kept for the purpose of producing free children) and explicitly not to women available for sale^(DEM59.67). This means that we have court records of those accused of adultering wives aggressively defending themselves by declaring the objects of their attentions to be the second kind of woman – while very precisely and luridly defining that as a woman available for sale to any john, particularly if at a fixed price.

This second kind of woman, the pornēs or those like them such as flute players, two-obol women, bridge women, alley walkers, or ground beaters, were typically owned by a pimp in a highly regulated commercial marketplace. The logical consequences of the trade in pornēs were seen as an uncontroversial part of life, and indeed a public good. Tradition even held that Solon the lawgiver opened a brothel in Athens himself as an act of public service.^((Philemon, Frag. 3; Athenaeus, Deipn. 569d)) The systematic rape of the vulnerable that the institution represented was regulated by cities in the same way that roads were, as a lucrative and essential public utility. Indeed the task of overseeing it in Athens was given to the Astynomoi, a board of citizens who were entrusted with tasks associated with maintaining thoroughfares, such as ensuring the reputable disposal of feces and abandoned corpses from the streets. For example, they established a price cap of two drachmas to protect ‘consumers,’ while the same officials who enforced that cap would also adjudicate disputes over women (by the drawing of lots to avoid price competition that the woman involved could benefit from). These disputes were notoriously rough and perhaps commonplace as Aristophanes makes fun of in a scene in Wasps where a father and son play a twisted game of tug-of-war with a naked flute player stolen from a symposium. Sex traffickers were given licenses to minimize these issues and to ensure quality ‘product’, as well as districts to operate in (generally near docks or city gates) to manage the noises, smells, and brawls over women that were inherent to the whole business. The ‘trade’ was also clearly large and a large part of life. While it is very unclear what the exact percentage of women could be described as pornēs would be in any western society before the advent of the modern census, it is clear that in successful cities in Classical Greece it was at least astonishingly large – particularly after victorious military campaigns when cities were flooded with more unfortunate captives than they could assault at any price. It is also important to consider that every free woman in that era had the threat of being sold into porneia hanging over her head, as women who lost the social status granted to them by a man for whatever reason could always be sold or abducted for a sort of ‘scrap value.’ This would have been true to varying degrees whether that status was as a ‘wedded wife according to the laws’ kept as part of a relationship with her father’s family and/or for the purpose of producing heirs, by virtue of more tenuous or ambiguous sexual relationship(s), or by virtue of being maintained as a still unmarried daughter or sister or cousin. Losing that connection through shifting political winds, aging into sexual disinterest, familial indifference, or through military defeat could mean the beginning of a short life of deprivation and exploitation.

(EDITED FOR LINK ROT)

Was it love at first sight? Did Eros sting you with love’s deadly poison? Have Aphrodite’s fair charms brought together star-crossed lovers?

Probably not – in Ancient Greece romantic relationships outside of marriage as we might envisage them were rare, and for those that did marry love came a close-second to marriage’s main purpose, crassly summarised by Menander: “for the aroto (ploughing) of legitimate children” (Perikeiromene, 1013-14).

Since others have discussed other romantic ventures that were available outside of marriage, and it’s such a massive topic to cover, I thought I might focus on how conventional relationships surrounding marriage would work, and how someone could go from an admirer to husband following from what you asked in the question.

Let’s start by clearing up any misconceptions we might have based on our own values surrounding marriage in the modern world. Thankfully there is a wealth of evidence of marriage practises and courting rituals in Ancient Greece. For the Greeks as much as us marriage was an important moment in one’s life, and so we have marriages described in authors ranging from Homer and Herodotus down to the playwrights such as Aristophanes and Euripides, and all things in between. We also have an invaluable trove of visual depictions of marriage ceremonies and courtships on vases, though many of these present stylised and symbolic depictions rather than literal ones. For the Greeks, marriage was an important ritual that constituted the creation of an oikos, the family unit central to Greek society through which citizenship and legitimate heirs were produced. Strangely, there was no actual word in ancient Greece for the “institution” of marriage in itself. The verb gamein was often substituted, which could refer to marriage or sexual unions in general. A brilliant summary of this ancient distinction is offered by Oakley and Sinos (1993) “the wedding was, in essence, a celebration of a sexual union that was sanctioned by the community”.

With this in mind, we should perhaps ask what our “type” might be. Of course our modern sensibilities may like to imagine shared interests in the Olympic games, or going to the Theatre, or our shared love of all things Spartan (because what says romance better than some melas zomos, black-blood soup) – not forgetting of course basic romantic chemistry. Though we cannot completely discount these things, your question probably gave away the best criteria a lower-class Greek would take into consideration when finding a suitable partner: a “girl of similar class on the other side of the polis/village to me”. The main criteria would likely be that your betrothed is a citizen of the city you are from (let’s say for sake of ease that we are Athenian, since most of our evidence inevitably leads us to Athens). Citizenship was a vital component of Ancient Greek society, certain legal and political privileges were only afforded to citizens, and in many cities (including Athens after Pericles’ citizenship reforms in the 450s BC) both parents would have to be Athenian in order for their children to be considered for citizenship. Love is nice, but for the Greeks citizenship would be more important. Property was also an important consideration, and in some cities (Athens included) cousins might marry to ensure that family estates remained in the family. But of course rules are not always clear-cut! And in true irony the Athenian statesman Pericles was notoriously ridiculed for hitching himself to a foreign lover after divorcing his first wife (whom he was closely related to, though the details aren’t clear). Plutarch says that “he legally bestowed her upon another man, with her own consent, and himself took Aspasia, and loved her exceedingly. Twice a day, as they say, on going out and on coming in from the market-place, he would salute her with a loving kiss.” (Pericles, 24). Pericles own experiences highlight that marriage and relationships in the ancient world could be messy and complicated at times, and that we should not assume that the often idealised view of marriage we have in many other contemporary sources were applicable to every marriage and relationship. However Pericles relationship was not received well by his contemporaries: the comedians ridiculed Aspasia “As his Hera, Aspasia was born, the child of Unnatural Lust, A prostitute past shaming." (Cratinus as quoted by Plutarch), and Pericles own son with Aspasia was considered illegitimate under Pericles’ own citizenship laws…

So likely as a young Greek man you would avoid the social stigmas attached to wedding outside of your own community, the benefits enjoyed by citizens were too important to lose for your children.

You also mentioned that we are envisaging an “adolescent” or “young” Greek man. The age of marriage in Greek society is a bit unclear as the sources do advise different ages – girls seemed to marry once they reached sexual maturity in their mid-teens; Plato and Hesiod suggest men marry in their late twenties or even older. Aristotle suggests 37 was an ideal age: “Women should marry when they are about eighteen years of age, and men at seven and thirty; then they are in the prime of life, and the decline in the powers of both will coincide.” (Aristotle, Politics, 7.16). How far this age-gap difference could be is open to interpretation, Menander (Aspis, 266-7) scolds an older man for marrying a young girl, advising him to “let her find a groom of her own age”. So certainly couples of a similar age would marry, but it was not uncommon for older men to marry girls even in their early to mid-teens. This age disparity again highlights what I already mentioned: that marriage is primarily about producing children: for girls in Ancient Greece once they had reached sexual maturity then they would be “suitable” for marriage.

This also of course brings up another big issue with regards to Greek marriage – did the bride have any say in who they married? We could look at someone like Penelope in the Odyssey, who famously delays and tricks her suitors to avoid marrying any of them, to suggest some female agency in their choice of partner, but this of course is obscured in the realm of legend and myth. In all likelihood the bride would probably have little-to-no say in who they married, which was far more likely decided by their father or nearest male relative who acted as their “guardian”. Courtship or acting as boyfriend/girlfriend before marriage would be rare among “respectable” circles, as chastity was considered an important virtue of women in Ancient Greece. proteleia or prenuptial sacrifices and rituals would propitiate the goddess Artemis (who represented virginity) whilst entrusting the bride to Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual love (Diodorus, 5.73.2) – the idea being that the wedding night consummation was expected to be when the bride lost her virginity. Love poetry and other benign forms of wooing your betrothed did exist (perhaps most famously in Sappho), but to the best of my knowledge none of these are about a groom writing emphatically about his would-be bride!

With regards to physical/sexual attraction or love between spouses etc. – it is a huge subject and something that could be written about extensively here (take for example Plato’s Symposium where his speakers spend a whole evening talking about it!) It is a bit out of my own knowledge and so hopefully someone with more expertise can expand on this point for you. But perhaps unsurprisingly, the Ancient Greeks could find themselves stuck in a loveless marriage, or they could be very much in love! Plenty of ancient writers talk affectionately about their wives or present happy relationships, conversely many mythological stories and comedic/tragic plays centre on wayward spouses, adultery and all other issues that can still affect marriages to this day. What these stories attest to is the breadth of experience that people could experience in their marriages, some were successful, others not.

Crucially however, physical and sexual pleasure was not just consigned to the marriage once a man and woman married. The statesman Demosthenes said that “We keep hetaerae for the sake of pleasure, females slaves for our daily care and wives to give us legitimate children and to be the guardians of our households.” (Apollodorus Against Neaera, III, 122). In this case hetaerae would be best defined as prostitutes or mistresses frequented by the men. This point reiterates the primary purpose of marriage, as for the purpose of having children. Though many couples would have been in happily in love, sexual pleasure and other more intimate needs were not a primary driving purpose when seeking a marriage, as these could be separated from the marriage and sought externally (it’s perhaps no surprise that most of Plato’s discussion in the Symposium centres on male homosexual desire). Indeed, if we were to take the stories from Greek theatre as gospel, we might imagine women desiring extramarital affairs as much as the men, Aristophanes’ Lysistrata comes to mind.