Most sacrifices connected with the slaughtering of animals were followed by a festive banquet, at which the flesh of the victims constituted the principal dish, and thus the wedding sacrifice also was followed by a feast, which was generally held at the house of the bride’s father. As this must, according to custom, have taken place in the afternoon, we may assume that the other wedding ceremonies had been performed in the morning. The wedding banquet was one of the few occasions when men and women dined together; this generally occurred only in most intimate family circles, but not when guests were present. The luxury of these wedding banquets seems to have increased so much that the State was at last obliged to limit the number of guests by law. Plato would not have allowed husband and wife to invite more than five friends and five relations each—that is, twenty in all—on any occasion, whether a wedding or otherwise; and a statute of the fourth century B.C. makes thirty the maximum limit for weddings, and instructs the officials who had charge of the women (γυναικόνομοι) to see that this rule is not infringed; and they seem to have carried out their office so strictly that on these occasions they often entered the house, counted the guests, and turned out all who exceeded the legal number. At the banquet, as well as at the sacrifice which preceded it, the bride appeared in all her bridal adornments. Some female relation or friend who took the part of a modern bridesmaid (νυμφευτρíα) undertook to deck the bride and anoint her with costly essences, and dress her in clothes of some fine, probably coloured, material, while special shoes, ribbons, and flowers in the hair were regarded as important, as well as the veil, which was the special mark of the bride, and covered the head, falling low down and partly covering the face. The bridegroom, too, appeared in a festive white dress, which differed from his ordinary clothing chiefly by the fineness of material; he, too, wore a wreath, as did all the other guests at the banquet; but special flowers, supposed to be of fortunate omen, were worn by the bride and bridegroom. We do not hear of any special dishes supplied at weddings, but cakes, to which the Greeks assigned a symbolical connection with festive occasions, played an important part, and in particular cakes of sesame found a place at the wedding banquet. A special custom peculiar to Athens was for a boy, both of whose parents must be alive, to go round wreathed with hawthorn or acorns carrying a basket of cakes, singing, “I fled from misfortune, I found a better lot.”
When the banquet was concluded, according to custom, by libation and prayers, and the night began to set in, the bride was conducted home to the house of the bridegroom. It was only among very poor people that the bride went on foot in this procession; if it was at all possible, she took her place between the bridegroom and the groomsman (παράνυμφος or πáροχος), who was a near relation or intimate friend of the bridegroom, in a carriage drawn by oxen or horses. All the other persons who took part in the procession—that is, all who had been at the banquet, and probably many others as well—went on foot behind the carriage to the sound of harps and flutes, while one went on in front as leader. The bride’s mother occupied the place of honour in the procession, carrying in her hand the bridal torches, kindled at the family hearth, and thus the bride took the sacred fire of her home to her new dwelling. On this account the ancients represented the god of Marriage, Hymen, with a torch as symbol. If other members of the procession also carried torches, that was only in accordance with the custom of using them when going out in the evening; it was only the torches of the bride’s mother that had any symbolical meaning. Meantime the bride’s attendants sang a bridal song, while the procession moved through the streets to the bridegroom’s house. This song is called Hymenaeus, and the following is found at the end of the Birds of Aristophanes:—
“Jupiter, that god sublime,
When the Fates in former time
Matched him with the Queen of Heaven
At a solemn banquet given,
Such a feast was held above,
And the charming god of Love,
Being present in command,
As a bridegroom took his stand
With the golden reins in hand.
Hymen, Hymen, Ho!”[B]
The bridegroom’s mother, also carrying torches, awaited the procession by the bridegroom’s door, which was festively decked with wreaths. A shower of all manner of sweetmeats was poured on the bridal pair, partly in jest and partly to symbolise the rich blessing invoked upon them; nor was the serious work forgotten which now awaited the young wife in her new position: a pestle for bruising the corn grains was hung up near the bridal chamber, to remind her of her duties as head of the household, and it was an ancient Athenian custom for the bride herself to carry some household implement in the procession, as, for instance, a sieve or a vessel for roasting. Another symbolical custom, supposed also to date from an ordinance of Solon, was for the bride, after her arrival in her new home, to eat a quince, which, like the pomegranate, was supposed to be a symbol of fruitfulness.
The bridegroom’s mother then attended the bridal pair to the thalamus or bridal chamber, where the richly-decked, flower-strewn marriage couch was prepared. When all the guests had gone away the bridegroom locked the door, and while the bride unveiled herself to him for the first time, the youths and maidens outside sang another song—either a few verses of the Hymenaeus or an Epithalamium, accompanied with praises of the married pair, and also doubtless by some jesting personal allusions. The Epithalamium of Helen, in Theocritus, begins thus:—
“Slumberest so soon, sweet bridegroom?
Art thou over-fond of sleep?
Or hast thou leaden-weighted limbs?
Or hadst thou drunk too deep
When thou didst fling thee to thy lair?
Betimes thou shouldst have sped,
If sleep were all thy purpose,
Unto thy bachelor’s bed,
And left her in her mother’s arms
To nestle and to play,
A girl among her girlish mates,
Till deep into the day:—
For not alone for this night,
Nor for the next alone,
But through the days and through the years
Thou hast her for thine own.”
And it ends thus:—
“Sleep on, and love and longing
Breathe in each other’s breast;
But fail not, when the morn returns,
To rouse you from your rest:
With dawn shall we be stirring,
When, lifting high his fair
And feathered neck, the earliest bird
To clarion to the dawn is heard.
O God of brides and bridals,
Sing ‘Happy, happy pair!’”[C]
Very often the young men, before setting out homewards, amused themselves by knocking and banging at the door of the bridal chamber, though a friend of the bridegroom’s kept watch there, ostensibly to prevent the maidens from going in to their married comrade. The last lines of the above-quoted epithalamium show that the chorus sometimes returned early next morning to greet the pair on their awakening.
On the morning after the wedding, the newly-married pair received visits and congratulations from their relations and friends. The husband presented his young wife with gifts, and so also did the visitors, but this ceremony sometimes did not take place till the second day after the wedding; for a curious custom existed (only at Athens, however) for the husband on the day after the wedding to move into his father-in-law’s house, and there spend a night apart from his wife; she then sent him a new garment, whereupon he returned to her. With the wedding presents the dowry was often presented, along with various objects belonging to the trousseau, such as jars, ointments, sandals, toilette implements, etc. The wedding festivities were then concluded by a banquet given either by the bridegroom’s father in his house or by the bridegroom himself; but it does not appear that there were any women present on this occasion. Still, this banquet was of a certain importance for the young wife; at Athens it was connected with her formal admission among the clansmen to whom the bride now belonged by her marriage. Every tribe (φυλή) at Athens was divided into three clans (φρáτραι), each of these into thirty households (γένη); the members of the clans examined into the purity of descent of citizens, and every new-born child had to be entered in their register. This ceremony gave a sort of official, or at any rate public, legitimation to the marriage.