Hymen
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Hymen. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
hi'men, in Greek mythology, the god of marriage. One account makes him the son of Bacchus and Aphrodite; another account names Apollo as his father and one of the muses as his mother. For love of a maiden, Hymen dressed himself in woman's attire and went on a religious pilgrimage in a company of women. He was the means of saving the party from a band of pirates. As a natural result he married the maiden and came, in time, to be deified as the god of marriage. He is mentioned first by the poetess Sappho. In art he is represented as a boy, with wings and a garland. He is larger than Cupid. He carries a veil for the bride in one hand and a torch with which to light the household fire in the other.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the Greek god of marriage, was son of Bacchus and Venus, or, according to another version, of Apollo and one of the Muses. The people of Athens instituted festivals in his honor, and solemnly invoked him at their nuptials, as the Latins did their Thalassius. Hymen was represented as crowned with flowers, holding a burning torch in one hand, and in the other a wreath. In anatomy, the name denotes the semilunar, parabolic, or circular membrane situated at the outer orifice of the vagina in virgins. PAUL HYMANS HYMENOPTERA (hi-men-op'ter-a), an order of insects, containing about 25,000 species, and now usually acknowledged to stand at the head of the class of insects, and of which many, as ants and bees, are singularly interesting and important.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The mythology in these entries still stands: Hymen is the Greek marriage god invoked in the wedding refrain "Hymen, O Hymenaee", his parentage disputed between Dionysus and Aphrodite or Apollo and a Muse, and he is indeed named in the earliest surviving wedding songs attributed to Sappho. What has moved is the anatomical sense that Collier's added in 1921, defining the hymen as the membrane found "in virgins". Modern gynaecology finds the hymen varies widely from birth, can be stretched or torn by exercise, tampons or nothing at all, and often remains after intercourse, so it is no test of sexual history; in 2018 the World Health Organization, UN Women and the UN human rights office jointly called for virginity testing to be eliminated worldwide. Collier's stray note that Hymenoptera contains "about 25,000 species" has also aged: roughly 150,000 are now described, with the true total thought to run into the millions.
Written for this edition, 2026.