Deipnosophistae

There is the Isthmiacum also, and there was a kind of crown bearing this name, which Aristophanes has thought worthy of mention in his Fryers, where he speaks thus—

1. What then are we to do? We should have taken
2. A white cloak each of us; and then entwining
3. Isthmiaca on our brows, like choruses,
4. Come let us sing the eulogy of our master.

But Silenus, in his Dialects, says,

The Isthmian garland.

And Philetas says,

στέφανος. There is an ambiguity here as to whether it refers to the head or to the main world.[*](Schweighauser confesses himself unable to guess what is meant by these words.) We also use the word ἴσθμιον, as applied to a well, or to a dagger.

But Timachidas and Simmias, who are both Rhodians, explain one word by the other. They say, ἴσθμιον, στέφανον: and this word is also mentioned by Callixenus, who is himself also a Rhodian, in his History of Alexandria, where he writes as follows—

1. * * * * * *

But since I have mentioned Alexandria, I know that in that beautiful city there is a garland called the garland of Antinous, which is made of the lotus, which grows in those parts. And this lotus grows in the marshes in the summer season; and it bears flowers of two colours; one like that of the rose, and it is the garlands woven of the flower of this colour which are properly called the garlands of Antinous; but the other kind is called the lotus garland, being of a dark colour. And a man of the name of Pancrates, a native poet, with whom we ourselves were acquainted, made a great parade of showing a rose-coloured lotus to Adrian the emperor, when he was staying at Alexandria, saying, that

he ought to give this flower the name of the Flower of Antinous, as having sprung from the ground where it drank in the blood of the Mauritanian lion, which Hadrian killed when he was out hunting in that part of Africa, near Alexandria; a monstrous beast which had ravaged all Libya for a long time, so as to make a very great part of the district desolate. Accordingly, Hadrian being delighted with the utility of the invention, and also with its novelty, granted to the poet that he should be maintained for the future in the Museum at the public expense; and Cratinus the comic poet, in his Ulysseses, has called the lotus στεφάνωμα, because all plants which are full of leaf, are called στεφανώματα by the Athenians. But Pancrates said, with a good deal of neatness, in his poem—

1. The crisp ground thyme, the snow-white lily too,
2. The purple hyacinth, and the modest leaves
3. Of the white celandine, and the fragrant rose,
4. Whose petals open to the vernal zephyrs;
5. For that fair flower which bears Antinous' name
6. The earth had not yet borne.

There is the word πυλέων. And this is the name given to the garland which the Lacedæmonians place on the head of Juno, as Pamphilus relates.

I am aware, also, that there is a kind of garland, which is called ʼἰάκχας by the Sicyonians, as Timachidas mentions in his treatise on Dialects. And Philetas writes as follows:—

ʼἰάκχα—this is a name given to a fragrant garland in the district of Sicyon—

1. She stood by her sire, and in her fragrant hair
2. She wore the beautiful Iacchian garland.

Seleucus also, in his treatise on Dialects, says, that there is a kind of garland made of myrtle, which is called ʼἐλλωτὶς, being twenty cubits in circumference, and that it is carried in procession on the festival of the Ellotia. And he says, that in this garland the bones of Europa, whom they call Ellotis, are carried. And this festival of the Ellotia is celebrated in Corinth.

There is also the θυρεατικός. This also is a name given to a species of garland by the Lacedæmonians, as Sosibius tells us in his treatise on Sacrifices, where he says, that now it is called ψίλινος, being made of branches of the palm-tree. And he says that they are worn, as a memorial of the victory which they gained, in Thyrea,[*](See the account of this battle, Herod. i. 82.) by the leaders of the choruses,

which are employed in that festival when they celebrate the Gymnopeediæ.[*](The Gymnopædiæ, or Festival of naked Youths, was celebrated at Sparta every year in honour of Apollo Pythæus, Diana, and Latona. And the Spartan youths danced around the statues of these deities in the forum. The festival seems to have been connected with the victory gained over the Argives at Thyrea, and the Spartans who had fallen in the battle were always praised in songs on the occasion.—V. Smith, Diet. Gr. Lat. Ant. in voc. ) And there are choruses, some of handsome boys, and others of full-grown men of distinguished bravery, who all dance naked, and who sing the songs of Thaletas and Alcman, and the paeans of Dionysodotus the Lacedæmonian.

There are also garlands called μελιλώτινοι,, which are mentioned by Alexis in his Crateva, or the Apothecary, in the following line—

1. And many μελιλώτινοι garlands hanging.

There is the word too, ἐπιθυμίδες,, which Seleucus explains by

every sort of garland.

But Timachidas says,

Garlands of every kind which are worn by women are called ἐπιθυμίδες.

There are also the words ὑποθυμὶς and ὑποθυμιὰς, which are names given to garlands by the Aeolians and Ionians, and they wear such around their necks, as one may clearly collect from the poetry of Alcæus and Anacreon. But Philetas, in his Miscellanies, says, that the Lesbians call a branch of myrtle ὑποθυμὶς, around which they twine violets and other flowers.

The ὑπογλωττὶς also is a species of garland. But Theodorus, in his Attic Words, says, that it is a particular kind of garland, and is used in that sense by Plato the comic poet, in his Jupiter Ill-treated.

I find also, in the comic poets, mention made of a kind of garland called κυλιστὸς,, and I find that Archippus mentions it in his Rhinon, in these lines—

1. He went away unhurt to his own house,
2. Having laid aside his cloak, but having on
3. His ἐκκύλιστος garland.

And Alexis, in his Agonis, or The Colt, says—

1. This third man has a κυλιστὸς garland
2. Of fig-leaves; but while living he delighted
3. In similar ornaments:

and in his Sciron he says—

1. Like a κυλιστὸς garland in suspense.

Antiphanes also mentions it in his Man in Love with Himself. And Eubulus, in his Œnomaus, or Pelops, saying—

1. Brought into circular shape,
2. Like a κυλιστὸς garland.

What, then, is this κυλιστός? For I am aware that Nicander of Thyatira, in his Attic Nouns, speaks as follows,—

'ʼἐκκυλίσιοι στέφανοι, and especially those made of roses.

And now I ask what species of garland this was, O Cynulcus; and do not tell me that I am to understand the word as meaning merely large. For you are a man who are fond of not only picking things little known out of books, but of even digging out such matters; like the philosophers in the Joint Deceiver of Baton the comic poet; men whom Sophocles also mentions in his Fellow Feasters, and who resemble you,—

1. You should not wear a beard thus well perfumed,
2. And 'tis a shame for you, of such high birth,
3. To be reproached as the son of your belly,
4. When you might rather be call'd your father's son.

Since, then, you are sated not only with the heads of glaucus, but also with that ever-green herb, which that Anthedonian Deity[*](Glaucus.) ate, and became immortal, give us an answer now about the subject of discussion, that we may not think that when you are dead, you will be metamorphosed, as the divine Plato has described in his treatise on the Soul. For he says that those who are addicted to gluttony, and insolence, and drunkenness, and who are restrained by no modesty, may naturally become transformed into the race of asses, and similar animals.

And as he still appeared to be in doubt;—Let us now, said Ulpian, go on to another kind of garland, which is called the στρούθιος; which Asclepiades mentions when he quotes the following passage, out of the Female Garland Sellers of Eubulus—

1. O happy woman, in your little house
2. To have a στρούθιος . . . . .[*](The rest of this extract is so utterly corrupt, that Schweighauser says he despairs of it so utterly that he has not even attempted to give a Latin version of it.)

And this garland is made of the flower called στρούθιον (soapwort), which is mentioned by Theophrastus, in the sixth book of his Natural History, in these words—

The iris also blooms in the summer, and so does the flower called στρούθιον, which is a very pretty flower to the eye, but destitute of scent.

Galene of Smyrna also speaks of the same flower, under the name of στρύθιον.

There is also the πόθος.. There is a certain kind of garland with this name, as Nicander the Colophonian tells us in his treatise on Words. And this, too, perhaps is so named as being made of the flower called πόθος,, which the same Theophrastus mentions in the sixth book of his Natural History, where he writes thus—"There are other flowers which bloom chiefly in the summer,—the lychnis, the flower of Jove, the lily, the iphyum, the Phrygian amaracus, and also the plant called pothus, of which there are two kinds, one bearing a flower like the hyacinth, but the other produces a colour-less blossom nearly white, which men use to strew on tombs.

Eubulus also gives a list of other names of garlands—

1. Aegidion, carry now this garland for me,
2. Ingeniously wrought of divers flowers,
3. Most tempting, and most beautiful, by Jove!
4. For who'd not wish to kiss the maid who bears it?

And then in the subsequent lines he says—

1. A. Perhaps you want some garlands. Will you have them
2. Of ground thyme, or of myrtle, or of flowers
3. Such as I show you here in bloom.
4. B. I'll have
5. These myrtle ones. You may sell all the others,
6. But always keep the myrtle wreaths for me.