Nicolas Poussin, Hymenaios Disguised as a Woman During an Offering to Priapus, 1634, São Paulo Museum of Art

In Greek mythology, Hymenaios (also Hymenaeus, Hymenaues, or Hymen; Ancient Greek: Ὑμέναιος) was a god of marriage ceremonies and later also the god of membranes, inspiring feasts and song. A hymenaios is also 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. Poussin redirects here. ... Museu de Arte de São Paulo The Museu de Arte de São Paulo (Portuguese for São Paulo Museum of Art, or MASP, was inaugurated in 1962, by Assis Chateaubriand and Pietro Maria Bardi. ... The bust of Zeus found at Otricoli (Sala Rotonda, Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican) Greek mythology is the body of stories belonging to the Ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. ... The Greek language (Greek Ελληνικά, IPA // – Hellenic) is an Indo-European language with a documented history of some 3,000 years. ... Matrimony redirects here. ... Epithalamium (from Greek; epi- upon, and thalamium nuptial chamber) specifically refers to a form of poem that is written for the bride. ...

Function

Hymenaios 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. The bust of Zeus found at Otricoli (Sala Rotonda, Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican) Greek mythology is the body of stories belonging to the Ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. ...

Hymenaios was celebrated in the ancient marriage song of unknown origin Hymen o Hymenae, Hymen delivered by G. Valerius Catullus. Both the term hymn and hymen are derived from this celebration.^[1][2] Hymenaios was summoned to give his blessing to every activity that involved the usage of membranes in Greek early industry, manly fluid filtering, filtration with Diatomaceous earth and reverse osmosis (which at the time was regarded as a magical phenomena). For other uses, see Hymn (disambiguation). ... For the Greek god of marriage, see Hymenaios. ...

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. The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 14th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe. ...

Sources

Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Homer's Iliad, book 18, line 494

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Butler's translation

Hymenaios was mentioned in Homer's Iliad, in the description of the forging of the shield of Achilles: Image File history File links Wikisource-logo. ... The original Wikisource logo. ... Image File history File links Wikisource-logo. ... The original Wikisource logo. ... This article is about the Greek poet Homer and the works attributed to him. ... title page of the Rihel edition of ca. ... For other uses, see Achilles (disambiguation). ...

He wrought also two cities, fair to see and busy with the hum of men. In the one were weddings and wedding-feasts, and they were going about the city with brides whom they were escorting by torchlight from their chambers. Loud rose the cry of Hymen, and the youths danced to the music of flute and lyre, while the women stood each at her house door to see them. “Lyres” redirects here. ...

– Book 18 (tr. Samuel Butler, 1898) Erewhon Hudibras, see Samuel Butler (poet). ...

He is also mentioned in Virgil's Aeneid and in five plays by William Shakespeare: Hamlet,^[3] The Tempest,Much Ado about Nothing^[4], Titus Andronicus, and As You Like It, where he joins the couples at the end — For other uses, see Virgil (disambiguation). ... Aeneas flees burning Troy, Federico Barocci, 1598 Galleria Borghese, Rome The Aeneid (IPA English pronunciation: ; in Latin Aeneis, pronounced — the title is Greek in form: genitive case Aeneidos) is a Latin epic written by Virgil in the 1st century BC (between 29 and 19 BC) that tells the legendary story... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... For other uses, see Hamlet (disambiguation). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy by William Shakespeare. ... Title page of the first quarto edition (1594) The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus may be Shakespeares earliest tragedy. ... Walter Deverell,The Mock Marriage of Orlando and Rosalind, 1853 William Shakespeares As You Like It is a pastoral comedy written in 1599 or early 1600. ...

"'Tis Hymen peoples every town;

High wedlock then be honoured.

Honour, high honour, and renown,

To Hymen, god of every town!"

Hymenaios also appears in the work of the 6th- to 7th-century Greek poet Sappho (translation: M.L. West, Greek Lyric Poetry, Oxford University Press): For other uses, see Sappho (disambiguation). ... Martin Litchfield West (born 23 September 1937, London, England) is an internationally recognised scholar in classics, classical antiquity and philology. ...

High must be the chamber –

Hymenaeum!

Make it high, you builders!

A bridegroom's coming –

Hymenaeum!

Like the War-god himself, the tallest of the tall!

He was the son of Bacchus (revelry) and Aphrodite (love); or, in some traditions, Apollo and one of the Muses. This article is about the ancient deity. ... The Birth of Venus, (detail) by Sandro Botticelli, 1485 For other uses, see Aphrodite (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Apollo (disambiguation). ... For other uses see Muse (disambiguation). ...

Other stories give him a legendary origin. In one of the surviving fragments of the Catalogue of Women associated with Hesiod, it's told that Magnes "had a son of remarkable beauty, Hymenaeus. And when Apollo saw the boy, he was seized with love for him, and wouldn't leave the house of Magnes" [1]. The story is also picked up in an account by Antoninus Liberalis. (B. Sergent, Homosexuality in Greek Myth, p. 109) According to the Suda, however, Hymenaeus' erastes was Thamyris. The Catalogue of Women (Greek: γυναικῶν κατάλογος, gynaikon katalogos) is an epic of ancient Greek literature. ... Roman bronze bust, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, now identified by some as possibly Hesiod Hesiod (Hesiodos, ) was an early Greek poet and rhapsode, who presumably lived around 700 BC. Hesiod and Homer, with whom Hesiod is often paired, have been considered the earliest Greek poets whose work has survived... Macarius Magnes Judah L. Magnes (Yehuda Magnes, Yehudah Magnes, Yehuda L. Magnes, Yehudah L. Magnes, Jehuda L. Magnes, Jehudah L. Magnes, Juda L. Magnes, Judah L. Magnes, Yehuda Leon Magnes, Yehudah Leon Magnes, Jehuda Leon Magnes, Jehudah Leon Magnes, Juda Leon Magnes, Judah Leon Magnes) Judah L. Magnes Museum This... Antoninus Liberalis, Greek grammarian, probably flourished about AD 150. ... Suda (Σουδα or alternatively Suidas) is a massive 10th century Byzantine Greek historical encyclopædia of the ancient Mediterranean world. ... In the pederastic tradition of Classical Athens, the eromenos (Greek ἐρόμενος, pl. ... In Greek mythology, Thamyris, son of Philammon and the nymph Argiope, was a Thracian singer who was so proud of his skill that he boasted he could outsing the Muses. ...

Aristophanes' Peace ends with Trygaeus and the Chorus singing the wedding song, with the repeated phrase "Oh Hymen! Oh Hymenaeus!" [2], a typical refrain for a wedding song.^[5] For other uses, see Aristophanes (disambiguation). ...

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 couldn't 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 join 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 honour and came to be associated with marriage. Eleusis (Game) The cardgame invented by Robert Abbott in 1962, and later popularized in 1977 by Martin Gardner in his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American magazine. ... This article is about the capital of Greece. ...

References

Sources

• Leonhard Schmitz, "Hymen." A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, William Smith, editor. (11.57).
• P. Maas, "Hymenaios" REF 9 (1916) pp. 130-34.
• Ovid. Medea and Metamorphoses, 12.
• Virgil. Aeneid, 1
• Catullus, Poem 62.