Note 93: — XXIV.—MARRIAGE. (Wall-Case 53.)

(c) When night had fallen there followed the procession, in which the bride was escorted from her father's house to that of the bridegroom, a procession described in one of the most splendid of the poems of Catullus.93 Torch-bearers and flute-players led the way, and the wedding train was accompanied by a crowd, the boys in which chanted rude jesting verses and petitioned the bridegroom for nuts.94 When the doorway of the house was reached, the bridegroom carefully lifted the bride over the threshold, that there might be no ill-omened stumbling. "Carry the gilded feet across the threshold," sings Catullus, "that the omen may be favourable." This moment is illustrated by a scene from a Roman comedy (No. 54), taken from a lamp exhibited on Table-Case K (see above, p. 28, fig. 17). The bride is being carried on the back of a man, while a Cupid waits at the door to receive her. Within the house she received a gift of fire and water, elements so necessary to the performance of the housewife's duties, and on the day following the wedding she did sacrifice at her husband's altar.