This is a selection of references to the Athenian wedding and marriage union in ancient Greek literature. Both the timeframe in which these works were written and the genre (didactic nonfiction, epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, etc.) reflect different aspects of the wedding in ancient Greece and provide varying commentary on marriage practices and surrounding social issues.
An Older Tradition
Although these works do not refer to Athens specifically, Hesiod’s writings and the Homeric epics reflect an earlier (likely 7th or 8th century BCE) attitude towards marriage which played a large role in the establishment of Greek custom. As the “Father of Greek Didactic Poetry,” Hesiod, in his Works and Days, has advice for Greeks in this work that extends to marriage: the proper age in which to marry, the importance of marrying a maiden, and an exhortation to make a careful choice:
Hesiod, Works and Days
Bring home a wife to your house when you are of the right age, while you are not far short of thirty years nor much above; this is the right age for marriage. Let your wife have been grown up four years, and marry her in the fifth. Marry a maiden, so that you can teach her careful ways, and especially marry one who lives near you, but look well about you and see that your marriage will not be a joke to your neighbours. For a man wins nothing better than a good wife, and, again, nothing worse than a bad one, a greedy soul who roasts her man without fire, strong though he may be, and brings him to a raw old age.[1]
The Homeric Epics
Iliad Book 18
On it [Hephaestus] made two cities, peopled And beautiful. Weddings in one, festivals, Brides led from their rooms by torchlight Up through the town, bridal song rising, Young men reeling in dance to the tune Of lyres and flutes, and the women Standing in their doorways admiring them.[2] Odyssey Book 23 And Odysseus, the master strategist: “Well, this is what I think we should do. First bathe yourselves and put on clean tunics And tell the women to choose their clothes well. Then have the singer pick up his lyre And lead everyone in a lively dance tune, Loud and clear. Anyone who hears the sound, A passerby or neighbor, will think it’s a wedding, And so word of the suitors’ killing won’t spread Down through the town before we can reach our woodland farm…”[4] |
Odyssey Book 4
…Menelaus Was hosting a double wedding party For his son and his daughter. He was sending her To wed the son of Achilles, as he had promised Long ago in Troy, and now the gods Were bringing the marriage to pass. He was sending her off with horses and chariots For her journey to the city of the Myrmidons, Over whom her husband-to-be was lord. For his son he was bringing a bride From Sparta... So Menelaus’ kinsfolk and neighbors Were feasting in the great hall. A bard Was singing and playing the lyre, And two tumblers whirled among the guests And led them to dancing.[3] |
In all three of these Homeric selections music and dance are vitally important to defining the wedding celebration. The two scenes from the Odyssey certainly point to elements which would have done just this: music, dance, food and entertainment. However, Achilles’ shield in Book 18 of the Iliad serves a couple of different purposes. It portrays a peaceful city in two scenes – a wedding and legal arbitration for a dispute – in a way that reflects the extent to which they are integral to the social structure of a functional city, a city that is not at war. The wedding, described first, portrays a vignette of joy which will then be juxtaposed with later scenes of violence on the same shield. Like Athenian tragedy, because nuptial tidings are used to contrast with the bleak prospects of war, this literary move supports the notion that ancient Greek culture saw the wedding as a time of great happiness.
Sappho
The lyric poetess Sappho is thought to have written during the 7th and 6th c. BCE in Lesbos, and her works were extremely popular throughout Greece – she was reportedly honored by even the influential Athenian archon Solon in the 5th c. BCE.[5] It is then plausible that her hymns might have been used during an Athenian ceremony. So although these poems do not concern weddings and marriages at Athens specifically, the poems which do comment on the wedding experience also comment on Greek tradition as a whole. Her poems and fragments can therefore be referred to in order to fill in gaps in otherwise unwritten aspects of the Greek wedding.
27 Raise high the roofbeams, carpenters! Hymenaon, Sing the wedding song! Up with them! Hymenaon, Sing the wedding song! A bridegroom taller than Ares! Hymenaon, Sing the wedding song! Taller than a tall man! Hymenaon, Sing the wedding song! Superior as the singer of Lesbos-- Hymenaon, Sing the wedding song! —to poets of other lands. Hymenaon![9] |
29 “Virginity, virginity Where will you go when you’ve left me?” “I’ll never come back to you, bride, I’ll never come back to you.”[10] |
Fragment 27 is unique because it is thought to have been a hymn actually used during the wedding ceremony. As such, it provides a snapshot of a particular moment in a Greek wedding (as opposed to the earlier commentary on proper behavior and age). Hymenaeus was the god of marriage, sung to during the ceremony for protection during the couple’s most vulnerable time. This coincides with Greek myths which recount the bride or groom dying on their wedding day. It was thought to be a time of great happiness and splendor – so much so to incite the jealousy of the gods.[6]
I am the god who is always chanted in the chambers of brides, and Menis, the comic actor, polished me well for the wedding of newly-married Procilla, and sent me with this prayer: “Go, Hymenaeus, in friendly wise, to both bride and bride groom.”
– Anonymous, the Greek Anthology[37] |
A Note on Athenian Tragedy
In the same vein as the shield of Achilles, tragedy uses a point of high happiness to create ultimate sadness. In the example of Euripides’ play Phoenician Women, which tells the story of the dispute between Eteocles and Polyneices in Thebes, Jocasta laments that she was not able to have the joy of carrying the torches for her son’s wedding because he was married in exile. Other works of Euripides like Phaethon use the backdrop of the wedding as a high point in which to show the events of tragedy; this work in particular depicts a young man who dies during the preparations of his wedding[11] - not unlike the myth of Hymen, who purportedly died on his wedding day.
Euripides, Phoenician Women
“I did not light for you the torchfire that custom ordains in weddings, as a happy mother should.”[12]
Jocasta to Polyneices, married in foreign lands.
Jocasta to Polyneices, married in foreign lands.
The Trojan Women
Cassandra rushes on, brandishing a torch in either hand.
Cassandra (sings): Hold up the fire, display it, bring it here!
I pay reverence – look upon me, look! –
To this temple with my torches. O lord Hymenaeus,
Happy is the bridegroom,
Happy am I in my coming marriage
To a king in Argos.
Hymen, O Hymenaeus, lord!...
Swing your foot high, lead the dance, lead it –
Euan, euoi! –
As for my father’s happiest fortunes.
Holy is the dance…
Oh, sound out the wedding song
In honour of the bride
With songs and shouts of blessing.[14]
Cassandra (sings): Hold up the fire, display it, bring it here!
I pay reverence – look upon me, look! –
To this temple with my torches. O lord Hymenaeus,
Happy is the bridegroom,
Happy am I in my coming marriage
To a king in Argos.
Hymen, O Hymenaeus, lord!...
Swing your foot high, lead the dance, lead it –
Euan, euoi! –
As for my father’s happiest fortunes.
Holy is the dance…
Oh, sound out the wedding song
In honour of the bride
With songs and shouts of blessing.[14]
In Euripides’ tragedy, The Trojan Women, Cassandra learns of her future marriage to Agamemnon. Just as tragedy juxtaposes the happiest moments – that is, marriage – with the most deplorable, in this play, Cassandra knows she will be murdered along with Agamemnon upon his return. Her Ophelia-like reaction compounds the pain which attends the death of a city as she sings about the different elements of the Greek wedding. Carrying a torch herself, she begins by shouting about the torchlight carried in the traditional procession. Like the wedding hymns and epithalamia sung at the wedding, her hymns are addressed to the god of marriage, Hymenaeus. Finally, she calls for dancing, later declaring it holy, sacred. All three of these Euripides used in Cassandra’s song to delineate a wedding, thereby calling attention to these elements as integral parts of the traditional practice.
Later in the play, Andromache comments on her future with Neoptolemus, the son of her husband’s killer. She claims that her behavior as a good wife to Hector has done her no good as it makes her desirable to the Greeks she so detests. In Andromache’s lament, Euripides provides the Greeks’ view of what behavior characterizes a proper, respectable wife:
Andromache: …First of all, in the matter of leaving the house – something that, whether a woman already attracts criticism or not, automatically gives her a bad reputation – I put aside my longing for that. Yes, I stayed at home…Before my husband, I always kept my tongue quiet and my expression calm. I knew in what spheres I should rule my husband, in what spheres I should concede victory to him.[15]
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound contrasts the conflicting sentiments of wedding hymns and laments much more bluntly when the chorus addresses Prometheus, already chained:
“This is the truth I have learnt from your downfall, Prometheus,
What strikes my ear is the difference
Between today’s sounds of sorrow
And the songs we sang to grace your marriage
The song for the bath and the song for the bed,
When you wooed and won with gifts
My sister Hermione for your wedded bride.”[13]
“This is the truth I have learnt from your downfall, Prometheus,
What strikes my ear is the difference
Between today’s sounds of sorrow
And the songs we sang to grace your marriage
The song for the bath and the song for the bed,
When you wooed and won with gifts
My sister Hermione for your wedded bride.”[13]
Athenian Comedy & Marriage
Menander, writing New Comedy in Hellenistic Athens, pokes fun at the wedding feast in his play, Samia, in which a lot of the humor derives from the characters’ extravagance in their preparations.[16] The bustling household in preparation for a pompous feast points to the importance of the wedding meal in the Athenian tradition, and the potential a large feast would have held for conspicuous consumption.[17]
In another comedy, the Litigants, Menander writes about the effects of emotional attachments and Athenian moral law on a marriage in Athens. Because legitimate marriages between Athenian citizens produced legitimate children for the Athenian state, laws regarding the morality of men and women were of high import. In the play, a man, after raping a woman at night, later hears his new wife had given away a child (in actuality his own – he had raped his wife).[18] Assuming he had married an immoral woman, and knowing that Athenian law required for him to divorce her because of it, he does not because he is so much in love.[19] Simultaneously, the bride’s father wants her to leave her new husband because of his presumed immorality with a mistress.[20]
In another comedy, the Litigants, Menander writes about the effects of emotional attachments and Athenian moral law on a marriage in Athens. Because legitimate marriages between Athenian citizens produced legitimate children for the Athenian state, laws regarding the morality of men and women were of high import. In the play, a man, after raping a woman at night, later hears his new wife had given away a child (in actuality his own – he had raped his wife).[18] Assuming he had married an immoral woman, and knowing that Athenian law required for him to divorce her because of it, he does not because he is so much in love.[19] Simultaneously, the bride’s father wants her to leave her new husband because of his presumed immorality with a mistress.[20]
Menander, Dyskolos (Grouch)
Kallippides: I don't want to take on a bride and a bridegroom who are both beggars: one is enough for us.
Sostratos: You're talking about money, an unstable business.
If you think that all of this will stay with you
for all time, guard it, share with no one
what you own. But what you're not yourself master of
— and everything you have is not yours but luck's --
don't begrudge any of these things, father, to anyone.
For luck herself will take everything of yours for herself
and assign them again to someone else, perhaps someone who doesn't deserve it…
…you must help out everyone, make rich
as many people as you can by your own efforts. For this act
never dies.[21]
In Menander’s Dyskolos (Grouch), Sostratos’ father does not want to tie his family to members of a lower social class – a typical concern of Athenians during the matchmaking process. However, Menander (through Sostratos) takes the opportunity here to undercut the value of wealth in marriage in a rather didactic response.
Sostratos: You're talking about money, an unstable business.
If you think that all of this will stay with you
for all time, guard it, share with no one
what you own. But what you're not yourself master of
— and everything you have is not yours but luck's --
don't begrudge any of these things, father, to anyone.
For luck herself will take everything of yours for herself
and assign them again to someone else, perhaps someone who doesn't deserve it…
…you must help out everyone, make rich
as many people as you can by your own efforts. For this act
never dies.[21]
In Menander’s Dyskolos (Grouch), Sostratos’ father does not want to tie his family to members of a lower social class – a typical concern of Athenians during the matchmaking process. However, Menander (through Sostratos) takes the opportunity here to undercut the value of wealth in marriage in a rather didactic response.
Later Writings
Plutarch, Moralia “Advice to Bride and Groom”
9 Whenever the moon is at a distance from the sun we see her conspicuous and brilliant, but she disappears and hides herself when she comes near him. Contrariwise a virtuous woman ought to be most visible in her husband's company, and to stay in the house and hide herself when he is away.
19 A wife ought not to make friends of her own, but to enjoy her husband's friends in common with him…
24 …Marriages ought not to be made by trusting the eyes only, or the fingers either, as is the case with some who take a wife after counting up how much she brings with her, but without deciding what kind of a helpmate she will be.[22]
Plutarch utilizes Greek history and similes to create a collection of advice for married couples in his “Advice to Bride and Groom.” In this part of his Moralia, Plutarch discusses the obligations of the husband and wife, considerations for men in his choice of a wife, and the appropriate behavior for married women. Some of his advice is still thought to be applicable outside of his context like his warning to choose a wife who will be of good help to her husband (24), his admonition about the value of beauty and wealth (22, 25), and his instructions on dealing with a spouse from a higher social class (8). Through blunt exhortations and anecdotes, Plutarch makes his advice particularly memorable for his audiences. Written in the first century, Plutarch’s advice reflects a late Greco-Roman tradition which developed after the fall of Athens, but shows the social and cultural values which carried over from Greece after its political fall. [See full text]
[1] Hesiod, l. 695-705.
[2] Iliad, 18.528-34
[3] Odyssey, 4.3-13, 18-22.
[4] Odyssey 23.133-43.
[5] Mark.
[6] Oakley, 11.
[7] “Poems of Sappho,” fragment 29.
[8] “Poems of Sappho,” fragment 35.
[9] “Poems of Sappho,” fragment 27.
[10] “Poems of Sappho,” fragment 21.
[11] Oakley, 4.
[12] Oakley, 26.
[13] Aeschylus, l. 554-60.
[14] Euripides 308-14, 326-28, 335-37.
[15] Euripides, l. 647-51, 654-56.
[16] Oakley, 4-5
[17] Oakley, 4-5
[18] “Marriage in Ancient Athens.”
[19] “Marriage in Ancient Athens.”
[20] “Marriage in Ancient Athens.”
[21] “Menander’s Dyskolos (Grouch),” l. 795-804, 807-09.
[22] Plutarch, 9, 19, 24.
19 A wife ought not to make friends of her own, but to enjoy her husband's friends in common with him…
24 …Marriages ought not to be made by trusting the eyes only, or the fingers either, as is the case with some who take a wife after counting up how much she brings with her, but without deciding what kind of a helpmate she will be.[22]
Plutarch utilizes Greek history and similes to create a collection of advice for married couples in his “Advice to Bride and Groom.” In this part of his Moralia, Plutarch discusses the obligations of the husband and wife, considerations for men in his choice of a wife, and the appropriate behavior for married women. Some of his advice is still thought to be applicable outside of his context like his warning to choose a wife who will be of good help to her husband (24), his admonition about the value of beauty and wealth (22, 25), and his instructions on dealing with a spouse from a higher social class (8). Through blunt exhortations and anecdotes, Plutarch makes his advice particularly memorable for his audiences. Written in the first century, Plutarch’s advice reflects a late Greco-Roman tradition which developed after the fall of Athens, but shows the social and cultural values which carried over from Greece after its political fall. [See full text]
[1] Hesiod, l. 695-705.
[2] Iliad, 18.528-34
[3] Odyssey, 4.3-13, 18-22.
[4] Odyssey 23.133-43.
[5] Mark.
[6] Oakley, 11.
[7] “Poems of Sappho,” fragment 29.
[8] “Poems of Sappho,” fragment 35.
[9] “Poems of Sappho,” fragment 27.
[10] “Poems of Sappho,” fragment 21.
[11] Oakley, 4.
[12] Oakley, 26.
[13] Aeschylus, l. 554-60.
[14] Euripides 308-14, 326-28, 335-37.
[15] Euripides, l. 647-51, 654-56.
[16] Oakley, 4-5
[17] Oakley, 4-5
[18] “Marriage in Ancient Athens.”
[19] “Marriage in Ancient Athens.”
[20] “Marriage in Ancient Athens.”
[21] “Menander’s Dyskolos (Grouch),” l. 795-804, 807-09.
[22] Plutarch, 9, 19, 24.