This reinterpretation of the Mediterranean Marriage Pattern is based on an anthropological-historical study of patrician marriages in the fifteenth-century city-state of Ragusa. In a comparison of marriage in Ragusa and Florence, it is argued that age at marriage is related to the order in which siblings are betrothed. That order is that sisters should become betrothed before brothers. Using computer simulation, it is shown that this does significantly delay the age at which brothers can become betrothed. This interpretation is related to considerations of honor, dowry, the economics of householding, and ties of patronage between affines.
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