HYMEN or H\"MENAEUS. originally the refrain of the song sung at marriages among the Greeks. As usual, the name gradu ally produced the idea of an actual person whose adventures gave rise to the custom of this song. He occurs often in association with Linus and Ialemus, who represent similar personifications, and is generally called a son of Apollo and a Muse. As the son of Dionysus and Aphrodite, he was regarded as a god of fruitful ness. In Attic legend he was a beautiful youth who, being in love with a girl, followed her in a procession to Eleusis disguised as a woman. and saved the whole band from pirates. As reward he obtained the girl in marriage, and his happy married life caused him ever afterwards to be invoked in marriage songs (Seryius on Virgil, Acn. i. 651).
See J. A. Hild in Daremberg and Saglio's Didionnaire des antiquites.