Xenophon of Ephesus, An Ephesian Tale 1.8.1 · 1.8.1
Torches and the wedding song
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Ὡς οὖν ἐφέστηκεν ὁ τῶν γάμων καιρός, καὶ παννυχίδες ἤγοντο καὶ ἱερεῖα πολλὰ ἐθύετο τῇ θεῷ. Καὶ ἐπειδὴ ταῦτα ἐξετετέλεστο, ἡκούσης τῆς νυκτὸς (βραδύνειν δὲ πάντα ἐδόκει Ἁβροκόμῃ καὶ Ἀνθείᾳ) ἦγον τὴν κόρην εἰς τὸν θάλαμον μετὰ λαμπάδων, τὸν ὑμέναιον ᾄδοντες, ἐπευφημοῦντες, καὶ εἰσαγαγόντες κατέκλιναν.
So when the time for the wedding came, all-night festivals were held and many animals were sacrificed to the goddess. When all this had been done and night had come (everything seemed slow to Habrocomes and Anthia), they led the girl to the bridal chamber with torches, singing the wedding song and shouting good wishes, and they brought her in and laid her down.
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The setting
Book 1, chapter 8. To soften the oracle, the two fathers have decided to marry Habrocomes and Anthia, and the wedding day comes.
A note on this passage
At a Greek wedding the bride was taken to the bridal chamber at nightfall by torchlight, and the people walking with her sang the ὑμέναιος, the wedding song with its cry to Hymen, god of marriage. Hephaestus works the same procession into the shield of Achilles: brides led through the city under blazing torches while the wedding song rises loud (Homer, Iliad 18.491–493). The word for the room, θάλαμος, was last heard in the oracle, in the line that sets a tomb beside a bridal chamber for them both (1.6.2).
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