HISTORY

History:

Going away back - Neolithic love

Neolithic culture is first seen in the Levant from around 9500 BC and was replaced by the Heliolithic (Copper tools) and then bronze ages. Neolithic, meaning 'new stone age' societies had knowledge of inactive agriculture and had domesticated some species of animals, they used pottery and often lived in mud-brick type simple houses. People lived amongst their tribe and social hierarchies were making their first appearances, in simple forms, but mainly social equality was order of the day (due to ignorance of anything else). Neolithic tools made it possible for farmers to harvest a remaining, but the aim of Neolithic life was still survival- so what does that mean for Neolithic love? It stands to reason that a farmer with progressive technology would have a better harvest than his challenger, stand a better chance of survival and be more attractive to women.

 The Neolithic period saw the start of ritualized and official marriage and brings us the earliest joint burial. In 2007 a pair of late Neolithic skeletons were found in Mantua, in Italy, the male skeleton locked in an embrace with the female- two lovers with everlasting affection.

Neolithic marriage would take place at holy sites, such as stone circles. The magic powers of the stones could bless a marriage and oath confirmed to each other on the stones were held as sacred. Phallic stones could bring fertility to the marriage.
Agriculture changed the frequency of childbirth amongst women, who no longer had to carry the single child as in traveling or hunter gather societies. Therefore second and third children came sooner. This would have helped to create closer bonds between the husband and wife, who had shared property and could sleep together in the same place night after night surrounded by their belongings. As the concept of property ownership developed so too did awareness that others had more - we can consider then that the first arranged marriages between a man who wanted a wife and the ability to exchange something with her kin took place. The concept of the offering came into existence as compensation to the family for the loss of an able worker.
It is strange that the freedom to be with whom we like, and are attracted to, is something we in the west view as inherently more civilized than arranged marriages. However it was the birth of society and civilizations which actually diminish the care-free love matches of pre-history and made marriage a form of trade or responsibility.

Civilization: 

 the code of laws left by Samurais of Babylonia we have a good idea of marriage in Babylon. The laws are general and cover many possible situations which might happen. Babylonian marriages took place after the signing of contracts, some of the laws involved on this business like form of relationship:                                                                              “If a man marry a woman and she bear him no sons; if then this woman die, if the "purchase price" which he had paid into the house of his father-in-law is repaid to him, her husband shall have no claim upon the dowry of this woman; it belongs to her father's house.”
The obligations are two way, the husband must fulfils his helpful duties:
If a man take a wife, and she be seized by disease, if he then desire to take a second wife he shall not put away his wife, who has been attacked by disease, but he shall keep her in the house which he has built and support her so long as she lives.”
The Babylonian system seems to be all about procreation and marriage as a duty, free from Romance. However, this particular law uses emotive language which tells us there was more to it:
“If a man wish to separate from a woman who has borne him children, or from his wife who has borne him children: then he shall give that wife her dowry, and a part of the field, garden, and property, so that she can rear her children. When she has brought up her children... She may then marry the man of her heart.”
It is that last phrase “man of her heart” which tells us women's desires were of importance.
In 1880 (AD) a Sumerian tablet dating from around 2000 BC was discovered. On it was written a racy message full of lust and desire:
“You have captivated me, let me stand trembling before you; Bridegroom, I would be taken to the bedchamber."
It is the oldest love poem yet discovered, although it is more likely to have been written by a man recreating a fabulous or legendary story of love than by a woman telling her own story or fantasy. Other similar poems from Sumerian were used as part of a productiveness habit where the King would have sex with a priestess and recreate the erotic encounter between a Shepherd and goddess in Sumerian fairy story. The goddess was the inventor, which suggests women were not necessarily passive in finding a partner. The pro-actively sexual female also features in the Epic of Gilgamesh, known as the oldest story ever written (circa 2700 BC). The hero Gilgamesh throw-outs the advances of the love goddess Esther, and she takes revenge by sending a great bull to terrorist in the earth - which Gilgamesh later slay.

Egypt -about Pharaohs

We often see Egyptian relationships through the prism of the Pharaohs and Gods. The Pharaohs, such as Remises, had hundreds of wives, some more important than others. If we take the examples of Nephritic and Akhenaton; or Remises II and Entertain, there are what we consider 'normal' marriages from amongst the Pharaohs. Both of these couples are depict in portraits together and the men and women are drawn at the same size- an indicator of shared importance in by those who made to order the work and therefore of genuine affection.
The Pharaohs were well known to be inborn and marry from within their own immediate families, this is obviously odd and we shouldn't allow it of what was normal. Egyptian records do not tell us a great deal about their sex lives - and when it is mentioned is just as often about homosexual as heterosexual relationships. Although we find little record of sex in Egyptian art, unlike for example amongst Greek material culture, we have been left some revealing love poetry. The following poem was found on the site of a worker's village, and dates back to the New Kingdom (1539-1075), so it was likely written by, though not necessarily composed by, an ordinary Egyptian (an artisan or scribe).
To hear your voice is pomegranate wine to me:
I draw life from hearing it.
Could I see you with every glance,
It would be better for me
Than to eat or to drink.
(Translated by M.V. Fox)
Most likely this poem was part of an oral tradition passed down through generations and only recorded around this time.
So seize the day! hold holiday!
Be unwearied, unceasing, alive
you and your own true love;
Let not the heart be troubled during your
sojourn on Earth,
but seize the day as it passes!
(Translated by J.L. Foster)
What is interesting about the above poem is that it is different to the normal view of Egypt as a society obsessed with the afterlife. Ancient Egypt was in fact infused with romantic ideals and earthly pleasures. As in Babylonia, marriage was more contract than crush. Archaeologists have found contracts between spouses and they are more like itinerary of property, who owns what and who keeps it in the event of divorce, than they are like romantic vow. Unlike for the Pharaohs, monogamy was expected, though divorce was possible.
Here is a marriage contract from 219 BC:
“The Bemoan, born in Egypt, son of Hoorays,
whose mother is Weiss, has said to the woman
Thais, daughter of the Kayo, whose mother is
Tairerdjeret: I have made you a married woman.
As your woman’s portion, I give you two pieces of
silver…If I dismiss you as wife and dislike you and
prefer another woman to you as wife, I will give you
two pieces of silver in addition to the two pieces of
silver mentioned above…”
A lot like the modern prenuptial agreement a Hollywood couple might sign - if they have the sense.

Ancient Greece - Heroic Sacrifice for Love 

If any single society has influenced later romantic ideals and love it is Ancient Greece. The heroes in Greek myth and legend were idealized versions of humanity, the models which were aspire to then and really ever since. The two great epic poems attributed to Homer, the Iliad and Odyssey, are both love stories. In the Iliad two kingdoms fight for the love of a beautiful woman and in the Odyssey the hero is (via a very circuitous route, it must be said) trying to get back from Troy to Ithaca to return to his wife and child - before another suitor can replace him. Odysseus' wife Penelope, who waits for her husband for twenty years, comes across as the ideal Greek wife, as loyal as she is beautiful, waiting inside her house so as not to compromise her honor. In contrast, if we take thesis as an example, men were not duty bound to this long lasting romantic loyalty. When he met Happily, queen of the Amazons, fell in love with her and took her away with him it sparked a war. Despite all that effort he had no scruples about abandon her once he met Phaedra. Zeus, as he appears in legend, was also faddish, to say the least, in his admirations, and although he sometimes resorted to rape. He appeared to Europe, as a bull, seduced Io and then turned her into a cow (only for 11 years), was bewitched by Simile, took the boy Ganymede to be his lover, tricked Cellist to take her chastity and impregnate Leo prior to his marriage to long-suffering Herat.
Zeus' thuggish promiscuity could not be called romantic, but then as King of the God's he was cast in the mould of the ultimate alpha-male, not the romantic lover seen elsewhere in Greek myth.
Zeus is an sign of the Greek acceptance and celebration (in reality) of sudden and passionate love- without paying attention to the cost.

Out of myth

Siphon was a female poet from Lisbon, and wrote many romantic poems about women, though we do not know if Siphon was writing them auto biographically it is from her that we have the terms 'Sapphic' and 'Lesbian':
As a wind in the mountains
assaults an oak,
Love shook my breast.
You came, Attics, you did so good
You refreshed my heart that was burned by desire
Whiter than milk
Fresher than water
Softer than the finest veil.
Siphon and the other Greek love lyricists wrote around the 6^th century BC. There was a shift away from the pompous epics to songs of a more intimate and less divine nature. Sung at social gatherings with a bowl if wine, they fell out of fashion to be revived around the time of Alexander (3^rd century BC) and again by Roman poets such as Catullus. These songs were about wild and wastefully emotion and the follow-on heartbreak.

That embarrassing other thing

Modern morality cannot be comfortable around a certain aspect of Greek sexuality, today it would, frankly, be called pedophilia. They did not share our stigma. It was accepted that an older man could be attracted sexually to a younger boy, and would enjoy attractive in intercourse with him. Attraction to boys was considered stronger than to women. We should remember that this was not seen as destructive or harmful to the boy, in fact it was seen as a step closer to manhood. The intercourse was always in one direction, as it were, and homosexuality between two grown men was stigmatized. The Greeks would lampoon the Persians as effeminate and camp, depict them as recipients in the homosexual relationship and this was shameful. Unfortunately deliberate destruction of artifact pertaining to pederasty have reduced our potential to fully understand the form it took. It was a feature of ancient Roman life too, though to a lesser extent.

Romans - From romantic to practical person

If you look at a Roman sculpture, once Rome had out of date Greece as the Mediterranean power, there is a shift from Hellenic idealized portrait to 'eristic' (truthful) depiction. This mirrored tastes in poetry/songs from the epic tales to the auto biographical and realistic.
The poet Cattalos wrote very personal poems about his own life, attacking his enemies, criticizing himself and praising the women he desired:
Give me a thousand kisses, a hundred more,
another thousand, and another hundred,
and, when we’ve counted up the many thousands,
confuse them so as not to know them all,
so that no enemy may cast an evil eye,
by knowing that there were so many kisses.
Cattalos suffered for his love, and the pain inspired his poetry:
Goodbye girl, now Cattalos is firm,
he doesn’t search for you, won’t ask unwillingly.
But you’ll grieve, when nobody asks.
Woe to you, wicked girl, what life’s left for you?
'Don't turn around now, you're not welcome any more', he might have written.  Cattalos at times uses warfare similes in his poems, and we see the contrast between epic and love poetry:  The heroic epic is about love and war, Roman love poetry uses war as a tool to describe love in passionate, visceral terms.
The fascination with Rome and Greece during the Renaissance reconnected medieval chivalric love and the epic tales of romantic quests from ancient times, the amalgamation can be seen in the likes of Shakespeare and classical opera. This context became mainstream in the arts, drilled into us in fiction, in stories and nowadays in film and television. Interestingly, this has very much influenced our own concept of a relationship, and the fact that we should be with the ones we love.
I'm going to conclusion here, it took thousands of years, but the circle has been completed and the kind of love seen in pre-historic societies, love for loves sake, not due to arranged marriage or financially motivated marriage, has become the western ideal and standard over the last hundred or so years, and across all the classes of society, for the first time since our Neolithic days.

For more information about love history read               love wikipedia