Although the most common attribution for Hymenaios’ parents is that he was either the son of Aphrodite and Dionysos or Apollo and one of the Muses, other stories give a mortal origin.

Both a surviving fragment of the Catalogue of Women associated with Hesiod, and an account by Antoninus Liberalis (Metamorphoses 23) agree that Magnes (the king of Magnesia) "had a son of remarkable beauty, Hymenaeus. And when Apollo saw the boy, he was seized with love for him, and wouldn't leave the house of Magnes.”

In one of the myths which assume Hymenaios to be the son of Apollo, he was so lovely that he attracted the affection of Dionysos. Zeus became so jealous that he killed the boy, but Dionysos resurrected him with a tonic made from grape ivy. Hymenaios is elsewhere said to have been the lover of the Thracian singer Thamyris (according to the Byzantine Greek Suda) & of Argynmus.

Despite his association with marriage, Hymenaios himself was never associated with a female mate until much later romanticised stories, when there seems to have been an attempt to ‘heterosexualise’ the Erotes (cf. Eros and Psyche). One such story is that he was an Athenian youth who fell in love with the daughter of one of the city's wealthiest men. Too poor to marry her, but being a very beautiful boy with delicate features, he dressed up as a girl and tagged along with the girl's party to celebrate the Eleusian mysteries, en route to which they were all kidnapped by pirates. Hymenaios killed the pirates, returned the girls to their home, and was granted his bride in reward for his valor. All the girls he had saved praised him in their bridal hymns, thus giving rise to the traditional refrain of O Hymenaios! O Hymen!

According to others stories Hymenaios was a youth killed by the breaking down of his house on his wedding-day, whence he was afterwards invoked in bridal songs, in order to be propitiated. Some relate that at the wedding of Dionysus and Ariadne he sang the bridal hymn, but lost his voice. According to the Orphic legends, the deceased Hymenaios was called to life again by Asklepios.

Hymenaios was not a god of heterosexual marriages only, but of any union like a marriage. For example Ovid related the story of Iphis, a girl disguised as a man, who wished to marry Ianthe, the women she loved: "Why should not Hymenaios, the wedding-god, preside over a marriage with no groom, when both of us are brides!" Iphis and Ianthe were united with the blessings of Hera, Aphrodite & Hymenaios. (Metamorphoses 9. 764 ff )

But like all the Erotes, even Hymenaios had a darker aspect too, and when he withheld his blessing, nothing good could come of a union. When Aphrodite placed a curse on the island of Lemnos, “Straightway fled ye from Lemnos, ye tender Erotes: Hymenaios fell mute and turned his torch to earth; chill neglect came o’er the lawful couch, no nightly return of joy was there, no slumber in the beloved embrace." (Statius, Thebaid 5. 65 ff).