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

MARRIAGE AND THE LIFE OF WOMEN

Kéchly (Akademische Vortrage, 1859, vol. i, p. 195), beautifully describes these Epithalamia as ““Tyrical dramas, which, as it were, are divided into several sets, and in which the characteristic parts of the marriage celebration were described in song and accompanied by rhythmical action indicating their content”.

In ancient times it was the custom for the husband himself to adorn the nuptial chamber with cunning hand. Thus Odysseus had done (Odyssey, xxiii, 190), and boasts of it on his return from Ilium with justifiable pride before his wife, in order to overcome her last doubts, whether he himself is really the husband who has so long been thought dead. From the importance of the building of the nuptial chamber we may certainly conclude that the following words are from the beginning of an epithalamium of Sappho (frag. 89-90 (91-92), in Kéchly’s text): ‘Raise high, ye workmen, the bridal chamber; Hymenzus! the bridegroom draws near, like Ares to behold! No, not like Ares, yet greater than one of the great ones, gloriously tall, as when the Lesbian bard outsings all others.t

“< Then was issued the appeal to arrange the nuptial couch and to adorn it with flowers. Young men and women are exhorted to take part in the feast for the glorification of which, considering the unusual beauty of the bride and the brilliant qualities of the bridegroom, the goddess of love herself comes down from heaven, beaming in beauty and accompanied by the charming Graces and lovegods, as we have learnt from the words of Himertus. Nor was the appeal in vain. The robust companions of the bridegroom and the blooming playmates of the bride are already assembled in the brilliantly lighted and festally adorned house of the former, waiting for nightfall and the arrival of the bride at

1 The passage from here to “*. . . conclusion of the entertainment ”’ (p. 53) is from Kochly, Akademische Vortrage, vol. i, p. 196.

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