Apologues, tales, and romances, owe their origin to Greece.  The modern Greeks love tales and fables, and have received them from the Orientals and Arabs, with as much eagerness as they formerly adopted them from the Egyptians.  The old women love always to relate, and the young pique themselves on repeating those they have learnt, or can make, from such incidents as happen within their knowledge.  The Greeks at present have no fixed time for the celebration of marriages, like the ancients; among whom the ceremony was performed in the month of January.  Formerly the bride was bought by real services done to the father; which was afterwards reduced to presents, and to this time the custom is continued, though the presents are arbitrary.  The man is not obliged to purchase the woman he marries, but, on the contrary, receives a portion with her equal to her condition.  It is on the famous shield of Achilles that Homer has described a marriage procession—­

  Here sacred pomp and genial feast delight,
  And solemn dance and hymeneal rite. 
  Along the streets the new made bride is led,
  With torches flaming to the nuptial bed;
  The youthful dancers in a circle bound
  To the saft lute and cittern’s silver sound,
  Through the fair streets the matrons in a row,
  Stand in their porches, and enjoy the show.

POPE.

The same pomp, procession, and music, are still in use.  Dancers, musicians, and singers, who chant the Epithalamium, go before the bride; loaded with ornaments, her eyes downcast, and herself sustained by women, or two near relations, she walks extremely slow.  Formerly the bride wore a red or yellow veil.  The Arminians do so still; this was to hide the blush of modesty, the embarrassment, and the tears of the young virgin.  The bright torch of Hymen is not forgotten among the modern Greeks.  It is carried before the new married couple into the nuptial chamber, where it burns till it is consumed, and it would be an ill omen were it by any accident extinguished, wherefore it is watched with as much care as of old was the sacred fire of the vestals.  Arrived at the church, the bride and bridegroom each wear a crown, which, during the ceremony, the priest changes, by giving the crown of the bridegroom to the bride, and that of the bride to the bridegroom, which custom is also derived from the ancients.

I must not forget an essential ceremony which the Greeks have preserved, which is the cup of wine given to the bridegroom as a token of adoption; it was the symbol of contract and alliance.  The bride drank from the same cup, which afterwards passed round to the relations and guests.  They dance and sing all night, but the companions of the bride are excluded—­they feast among themselves in separate apartments, far from the tumult of the nuptials.  The modern Greeks, like the ancient, on the nuptial day, decorate their doors with green branches and garlands of flowers.