The Greeks had instituted the custom of epiklerate: the female heir had to marry her oldest relative in the paternal family (genos); thus the property her father bequeathed to her would be transmitted to children belonging to the same group, and the estate remained the property of the paternal genos; the epikleros was not a female heir but only a machine to procreate a male heir; this custom placed her entirely at man's mercy as she was automatically handed over to the firstborn of her family's men, who most often turned out to be an old man.