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Epikleros


An epikleros (ἐπίκληρος; plural epikleroi) was an heiress in ancient Athens and other ancient Greek city states, specifically a daughter of a man who had no male heirs. In Sparta, they were called patrouchoi (πατροῦχοι), as they were in Gortyn. Athenian women were not allowed to hold property in their own name; in order to keep her father's property in the family, an epikleros was required to marry her father's nearest male relative. Even if a woman was already married, evidence suggests that she was required to divorce her spouse to marry that relative. Spartan women were allowed to hold property in their own right, and so Spartan heiresses were subject to less restrictive rules. Evidence from other city-states is more fragmentary, mainly coming from the city-states of Gortyn and Rhegium.

Plato wrote about epikleroi in his Laws, offering idealized laws to govern their marriages. In mythology and history, a number of Greek women appear to have been epikleroi, including Agariste of Sicyon and Agiatis, the widow of the Spartan king Agis IV. The status of epikleroi has often been used to explain the numbers of sons-in-law who inherited from their fathers-in-law in Greek mythology. The Third Sacred War originated in a dispute over epikleroi.

The term epikleros (a feminine adjective acting as noun; from the proverb ὲπί, epí, "on, upon", and the noun κλῆρος, klēros, "lot, estate") was used in ancient Greece to describe the daughter of a man who had died leaving no male heir. It translates to "attached to the family property", or "upon, with the estate". In most ancient Greek city states, women could not own property, and so a system was devised to keep ownership within the male-defined family line. Epikleroi' were required to marry the nearest relative on their father's side of the family, a system of inheritance known as the epiklerate. Although epikleros is often mistranslated as "heiress", strictly speaking the terms are not equivalent, as the woman never owned the property and so was unable to dispose of it.Raphael Sealey argues that another translation could be "female orphan". The term was used interchangeably, both of the woman herself, and of the property that was the inherited estate. The entire system of the epiklerate was unique to Ancient Greece, and mainly an Athenian institution.


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