Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

Phoensssae, 344 ; Iphig. Aul., 722, Aristoph., Peace, 1318 and elsewhere). All those who took part in the procession were festively adorned, as we should assume considering the pronounced Greek sense of beauty, if it were not already attested by Homer (Odyssey, vi, 27). ‘The bride’s dress appears as a rule to have been particoloured, that of the bridegroom (which is very characteristic) not black, as is usual with us, but white and of the finest wool, like that of the male escort of the procession. Bride and bridegroom were crowned and adorned with particoloured bands (taeniae); the bride had not been sparing of costly perfumes, and from her head fluttered the flaming veil customarily worn by brides.

Many congratulations and jesting exhortations were offered to the marriage procession by those who met it as it moved through the streets of the city to the accompaniment of flutes, while those who took part in it sang the Hymenzus, the wedding-song named after Hymen, the god of matriage.

A Hymenzus is already mentioned by Homer (Iliad, xvii, 491; cf. Plutarch, Mor., 667a); on the shield of Achilles (Hesiod, Shield, 272) a wedding-feast was also represented. “ They conducted the bride through the city beneath the brilliant light of torches; the wedding-song resounded loudly, young men turned round in the dance, and above them floated the strains of flutes and lyres; but the women stepped to the door and in astonishment looked at the procession.”

The Hymenzus is also sung in the weddingprocession, which was represented on the shield of Heracles and is described by Hesiod in detail. Perhaps Hesiod himself had composed an Epithalamium on the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, from which Tzetzes (Prol. ad Lycophronem = Hesiod, frag. Ixxi) (Goettling)) (twelfth century) quotes two lines, containing a eulogy by Peleus

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