EPITHALAMIUM, originally among the Greeks a song in praise of bride and bridegroom, which was sung by a number of boys and girls at the door of the nuptial chamber. According to the scholiast on Theocritus, one form, the was employed at night, and another, the 8&E-yeprucov, to arouse the bride and bridegroom on the following morning. Among the Romans a similar custom was in vogue, but the song was sung by girls only. In the hands of the poets the epithalamium was developed into a special literary form and received considerable cultivation. Sappho, Ana creon, Stesichorus and Pindar are all regarded as masters of the species, but the finest example preserved in Greek literature is the i Sth Idyll of Theocritus, which celebrates the marriage of Mene laus and Helen. In Latin, the epithalamium, imitated from Fescennine Greek models, was a base form of literature, when Catullus redeemed it and gave it dignity by modelling his Marriage of Thetis and Peleus on a lost ode of Sappho. The names of Ronsard, Malherbe and Scarron are especially associated with the species in French literature, and Marini and Metastasio in Italian. Perhaps no poem of this class has been more univer sally admired than the Epithalamium of Spenser (1595), though he has found not unworthy rivals in Ben Jonson, Donne and Quarles.