“Once a year in every village all the maidens as they attained marriageable age were collected and brought together into one place, with a crowd of men standing around a crier would display and offer them for sale one by one, first the fairest of all; and then, when she had fetched a great price, he put up for sale the next most attractive, [all the way down to the ugly ones]. Rich men of Assyria who desired to marry would outbid each other for the fairest.” The ordinary people, of course, got the