Hymenaios

Hymenaios
God of weddings, reception, marriage
Abode	Mount Olympus
Symbol	Bridal torch
Parents	Apollo and Clio, Calliope, Urania, or Terpsichore; Aphrodite and Dionysos
Siblings	Priapos
Roman equivalent	Hymen

Hymen (Ancient Greek: Ὑμήν), Hymenaios or Hymenaeus, in ancient Greece, was a god of marriage ceremonies, inspiring feasts and song. Related to the god's name, a hymenaios is a genre of Greek lyric poetry sung during the procession of the bride to the groom's house in which the god is addressed, in contrast to the Epithalamium, which was sung at the nuptial threshold. He was one of the winged love gods, Erotes.

He was the son of a muse, Clio or Calliope or Urania or Terpsichore.

Hymen was supposed to attend every wedding. If he didn't, then the marriage would supposedly prove disastrous, 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.

Hymen was celebrated in the ancient marriage song of unknown origin (called a Hymenaios) Hymen o Hymenae, Hymen delivered by G. Valerius Catullus.

At least since the Italian Renaissance, Hymen was generally represented in art as a young man wearing a garland of flowers and holding a burning torch in one hand.

Hymen was mentioned in Euripides's The Trojan Women, where Cassandra says:

Bring the light, uplift and show its flame! I am doing the god's service, see! I making his shrine to glow with tapers bright. O Hymen, king of marriage! blest is the bridegroom; blest am I also, the maiden soon to wed a princely lord in Argos. Hail Hymen, king of marriage!

He is also mentioned in Virgil's Aeneid and in seven plays by William Shakespeare: Hamlet,The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing,Titus Andronicus, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Timon of Athens, and As You Like It, where he joins the couples at the end —

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