The torch of Hymen: the light that guided ancient weddings

In Greek and Roman weddings light played a central role. The bride was led to her new home in the evening, by the glow of torches, amid songs and invocations to a particular god, Hymenaeus. From this custom arose one of the most eloquent symbols of married love: the lit torch, which we find in ancient poetry, on sarcophagi, in Renaissance painting and even in everyday language.

Hymenaeus, the god of weddings

Hymenaeus, or Hymen, was the deity who presided over marriage. The genealogies vary: in some sources he is the son of Apollo and a Muse, in others of Dionysus and Aphrodite. More than a god with a defined myth, he was the personification of the wedding song, the hymenaios, sung during the procession. The ritual invocation repeated his name, and in art he was shown as a winged youth or one crowned with flowers, holding a torch.

Catullus devoted two famous poems to weddings, 61 and 62, in which the refrain invokes the god with the formula “o Hymen Hymenaee”. Poem 61, written for the marriage of Manlius Torquatus, describes the waiting for the bride, the procession, the torches waved in the air and wishes for numerous offspring. It is one of the most vivid testimonies to the Roman wedding feast.

The torchlit procession

In Rome the climax of a wedding was the deductio, the procession that accompanied the bride from her father's house to her husband's. According to Festus, the bride was led by three boys whose parents were both living: one carried a torch of hawthorn before her, while the other two held her hands. The choice of hawthorn was linked to protective beliefs, and the torch itself was considered a good omen.

At the end of the procession, according to ancient testimony, the torch was thrown and the guests competed for it, since it was believed to bring good luck. The light of the torches gave the rite a character both solemn and festive, and marked the woman's passage from one family to another, from her father's name to her husband's.

The torch of Eros and the inverted torch

The torch did not belong to Hymenaeus alone. Eros too was often depicted with a burning torch, a symbol of the fire that inflames lovers, alongside or instead of the bow. Ovid, in the Metamorphoses, tells how Hymen appeared at the wedding of Orpheus and Eurydice, but his torch would not burn and gave off only smoke that brought tears to the eyes: a fatal omen, shortly before the bride's death.

The inverted torch, with its flame turned downwards, did in fact become an emblem of death and the end of life. On Roman sarcophagi and later in Neoclassical funerary art it is often carried by winged spirits in melancholy poses. The same image, lit or extinguished, could thus speak of love being born or love cut short.

From the hawthorn torch of the Roman procession to the verses of Catullus, from the smoking torch at the wedding of Orpheus to the inverted one on tombs, light accompanied the ancient story of married love. Even today, when we speak of the flame or fire of love, we unknowingly use a metaphor born in those evening processions.