In another early account (in the 5th century BC), Heraclides Ponticus describes how the king of the Island of Cephalonia instituted this practice.
In fact, the very first mention of this in the Epic of Gilgamesh, we see the hero Enkidu, who was sent by the gods to stop Gilgamesh after the people cried out to the gods for aid, physically blocking a wedding place to challenge Gilgamesh over this appalling abuse of power. But any such evidence simply doesn’t exist outside of fictional works or, for instance, cases where people were trying to rally the peasant class against their lords using the supposedly former practice of jus primae noctis to whip the mob up. Or even just a record of the law in some court case, as there are such records of numerous other laws. It could be argued that women in these periods, in general, would not be considered noteworthy, especially peasant women, but with a practice spanning (supposedly) thousands of years, and the presumable rage it would induce in the peasant populace, not to mention occasional bastard offspring and perhaps a boatload of secret weddings to avoid the issue, odds are at least a few documented cases would manage to make it down through posterity. Not a single well documented incident recorded, nor a single victim’s name passed down. Numerous historians have studied the subject and the result is that it turns out there is no solid evidence of this practice happening in reality at all. This practiced (apparently) reached its crescendo during the Middle Ages in Europe, and today is popularly depicted in Hollywood in such films as Braveheart. Precedence for this practice supposedly goes back for many thousands of years, with the first reference of something like it going all the way back to the Epic of Gilgamesh from over four thousand years ago. The practice of jus primae noctis (“right of the first night”) is, in simplest terms, the right of the local noble to deflower local peasant brides on their wedding night before their newlywed husbands.