THE KOSE IX CERE:M0NIES5 ETC. 



169 



among medical men of antiquity, endeavors were made to 

 determine Avhat kinds of flowers were suitable to place in 

 crowns without detriment to health; and according to 

 the report made on this subject, the parsley, the ivy, the 

 myrtle, and the Rose, possessed peculiar virtues for dis- 

 sipating the fumes of the wine. According to AtheniBus, 

 a crown of roses possessed not only the property of allevi- 

 ating pain in the head, but had a very refreshing effect. 



Pliny mentions two Greek physicians — Mnesitheus and 

 Callimaclius, — who wrote on this subject. 



The custom of crowning with roses had passed from 

 the Greeks to the Romans, and it also existed among the 

 Hebrews, who had probably borrowed it from some of the 

 neighboring nations, either from the Egyptians, in the 

 midst of whom they had spent many years, or from the 

 Babylonians, with whom they had in the captivity much 

 connection. The practice of this custom among the 

 Israelites is attested by the previously quoted passage, 

 in the apocryphal " Wisdom of Solomon." 



At Rome it was not only at the religious festivals that 

 they crowned themselves with roses and other flowers, 

 but it was the custom to wear these crowns during public 

 and private fetes ; they were strictly forbidden at some 

 other times, and above all on certain public occasions, 

 Avhere to appear with such an ornament would pass for an 

 insult to a public calamity. Pliny informs us, that during 

 the second Punic war, which lasted sixteen years, a banker 

 named Lucius Fulvius, for looking from his gallery on the 

 Forum, and Avearing a crown of roses on his head, was, 

 by order of the Senate, sent to prison, from which he was 

 not liberated until the end of the war. 



This anecdote, moreover, proves that crowns of roses 

 were in flishion at Rome at an early jDeriod, and before 

 licentiousness and luxury had yet made many inroads up- 

 on the national character. 



It may readily be supposed, that at Rome, under the 

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