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In Greek mythology, Hymenaeus (also Hymenaeus, Hymenaues, or Hymen; Ancient Greek: Ὑμέναιος) was a god of marriage ceremonies, inspiring feasts and songs (like wedding hymns, or epithalamia).
Function
Hymenaios was supposed to attend every wedding. If he did not, then the marriage would prove disastrous, and so the Greeks would run about calling his name aloud.
He presided over many of the weddings in Greek mythology, for all the deities and their children.
Given Hymenaios' presiding over wedding festivities, a connection has been suggested between him and the hymen. Lexicographers, however, state that this is more a case of sonic coincidence than etymological affinity.
Representation
At least since the Italian Renaissance, Hymenaios was generally represented in art as a young man wearing a garland of flowers and holding a burning torch in one hand and wearing a purple vest.
Sources
Hymenaeus was mentioned in Homer's Iliad, in the description of the shield of Archilles— though Robert Fagles elides the mention of his name:
- "With weddings and wedding feasts in one
- and under glowing torches they brought forth the brides
- from the women’s chambers, marching through the streets
- while choir on choir the wedding song rose high
- and the young men came dancing, whirling round in rings
- and among them flutes and harps kept up their stirring call—
- women rushed to the doors and each stood moved with wonder."
- "’Tis Hymen peoples every town;
- High wedlock then be honoured.
- Honour, high honour, and renown,
- To Hymen, god of every town!"
He was the son of Bacchus (revelry) and Aphrodite (love) (or, in some traditions, Apollo and one of the Muses).
Other stories gives him legendary origin. In one of the surviving fragments of the Catalogue of Women associated with Hesiod, it is told that Magnes "had a son of remarkable beauty, Hymenaeus. And when Apollo saw the boy, he was seized with love for him, and would not leave the house of Magnes" *. The story is also picked up in an account by Antoninus Liberalis. (B. Sergent, Homosexuality in Greek Myth, p.109) According to Suidas, however, Hymenaeus' erastes was Thamyris.
Aristophanes' Peace ends with Trygaeus and the Chorus singing the wedding song, with the repeated phrase "Oh hymen! Oh Hymenaeus!" *, a typical refrain for a wedding song
Later Story of Origin
According to a later Romance, Hymenaios was an Athenian youth of great beauty but low birth who fell in love with the daughter of one of the city's wealthiest men. Since he could not speak to her or court her, due to his social standing, he instead followed her wherever she went.
Hymenaios disguised himself as a woman in order to joined one of these processions, a religious rite at Eleusis where only women went. The assemblage was captured by pirates, Hymenaios included. He encouraged the women and plotted strategy with them, and together they killed their captors. He then agreed with the women to go back to Athens and win their freedom, if he were allowed to marry one of them. He thus succeeded in both the mission and the marriage, and his marriage was so happy that Athenians instituted festivals in his honor and came to be associated with marriage.
External link
- William Smith, editor. A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology(11.57)
See Ovid in both Medea and Metamorphoses 12; Virgil's Aeneid 1 and following, and Catullus's poem 62.
Greek gods | Fertility gods | Love and lust gods | Pederastic heroes and deities
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"Hymenaios"