Ancient Greek Wedding Nights

Hi all!

Since it was Valentine’s Day on friday (who cares but still! :-p ), we thought we could try and write about something relevant to romance.

So, how about we play a little game today?

Imagine it’s your wedding night; you are a young maiden, let’s say about fifteen, and you are in your wedding chamber with your husband. Your husband is a man about ten years older than you, whom your father has picked for you and you’ve just met him only few hours before.

With us so far? Good.

Up until today you’ve never actually been outside your father’s house before, except for a few occasions only, such us religious ceremonies.

It was only the day before that you’ve cut off your and hair and you’ve offered your childhood clothing and toys to Artemis, in hopes she would ease your transition into your new life and womanhood.

So, you are a bit a stranger to the world; you are inexperienced, perhaps a bit naive too and quite probably terrified about the entire situation, because really, you have no clue about such matters, yet you are supposed to go to bed with a stranger and consummate your marriage.

But let’s kick things up a notch, yes?

One of your husband’s friends in standing guard right outside your door, while your friends are there too, singing songs that are meant to reassure you, the bride, about the entire situation really; and then of course they have to sing playful, obscene songs too.

How does that sound? Thrilling, no?

Well, welcome to ancient greek wedding nights.

What do wedding nights have to do with our myth though? Well, there’s a wedding night in our myth too, remember?

Well, while we were doing our planning, we realised that a wedding night implied sex too; and since we would be addressing sex (in a rather indirect way but still!), we would have to resolve a couple of other issues first.

The most important issue was Eros’s depiction. He is almost always depicted either as a chubby winged baby or a winged youngster.

L'Amour et Psyché, enfants (William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1890)

Psyché et l'Amour (Francois Gerard, 1798)

Those images didn’t sit well with us though. For us, Eros looked like a man from day one; young and playful and immature maybe, but always a grown-up.

Now, onto the next issue; as you’ve probably gathered already, girls were thrown into marriage having no clue about what to expect.

In the original version of the myth, and in some of the much later versions too, on their wedding night, Eros gives Psyche immeasurable pleasure (and trust me, they use some much more cringe worthy wording than ours). We've had a good laugh about it, but it made sense (sort of) since he’s the god of love and all that.

L'Amour et Psyché (François Édouard Picot, 1817)

Cupid and Psyche (Károly Brocky, 1850-55)

The thing is that Psyche could hear and feel Eros, so how come she’s never commented on his wings? Unless of course she never moved a muscle while they were in bed together, she must have felt them at some point; wasn't she surprised? She certainly couldn't think of it as natural, so, what's the deal?

Well, we could work with Psyche being a bit naïve; it’s all part of her charm. But she was far from stupid, so we had to give a solid explanation about why she never touched said wings.

I doubt that anyone would pay that much attention to that little detail, but that’s what you get when two perfectionists team up; you have to have a solid explanation about everything you do. Knowing there was a fallacy in the reasoning would drive us crazy at some point, even if noone ever questioned us about it! :-p

So after quite a lot of thinking, we came up with a solution; Eros simply didn’t have his wings on, whenever he was in bed with Psyche; they are an accessory of sorts, pretty much like his bow and arrows, that's why she never felt them.

What do you think? Convincing enough?