BOOK XXI. III. 4-v. 7 



he painted the lady herself. This took place later 

 than the hundredth Olympiad." Floral chaplets 

 heing now fashionable, it was not long before there 

 appeared what are called Egyptian chaplets, and 

 then winter ones, made from dyed flakes of horn 

 at the season when earth refuses fiowers. At Rome 

 too gradually there crept in the name corollae, 

 given at the first to chaplets because of their deli- 

 cacy,* and presently that of corollaria, after the 

 chaplets presented as prizes began to be made of 

 thin plates, bronze, gilt or silvered. 



IV. Crassus the Rich was the first to make arti- 

 ficial leaves of silver or gold, giving chaplets <^ of 

 them as prizes at his games, to which were also added 

 ribbons. For these to be attached increased the 

 honour of the bare chaplet ; this fashion was due 

 to the Etruscan chaplets, to which properly only 

 golden ribbons were fastened. For a long time these 

 ribbons were plain. The custom of engraving them 

 originated with P. Claudius Pulcher, who also added 

 gold-leaf to the inner bark of the lime tree.'^ 



V. Chaplets, however, even those won in sport, 

 were always regarded as a dignity, for citizens would 

 go down to the Circus in person to compete in the 

 games, besides entering for events their own slaves 

 and horses. This custom explains that law of the 

 Twelve Tables:*^ " Whoso wins a chaplet in person 

 or by his chattel, let it be given him on the ground of 

 his worth." No one has doubted that by the " chap- 

 let won by his chattel " the kiw means that earned by 

 slaves or by horscs. What then was the honour ? It 

 lay in the indefeasible right, on the death of the victor 

 or of his parents, to have the chaplet laid on the body 

 during the lying in state at home and when it was 



165 



