bridegroom led
home the bride. Flowers full of symbolic meaning were offered on the
altars of the gods, and the topers at carousals were crowned with
wreaths of myrtle, roses, and violets, the latter being the favorite
flower with the Athenians. The flower-market of Athens was always
supplied with garlands to twine round the head and the upper part of
the body; for the latter also was adorned with garlands. Crowns
consisting of other flowers, and leaves of the ivy and silver-poplar,
are frequently mentioned. Wreaths also found a place in the serious
business of life. They were awarded to the victors in the games; the
archon wore a myrtle-wreath as the sign of his dignity, as did also
the orator while speaking to the people from the tribune.

The crowning with flowers was a high honor to Athenian
citizens--awarded, for instance, to Perikles, but refused to
Miltiades. The head and bier of the dead were also crowned with fresh
wreaths of myrtle and ivy.

The luxury of later times changed the wreaths of flowers for golden
ones, with regard to the dead of the richer classes. Wreaths made of
thin gold have repeatedly been found in graves. The barrows of the old
Pantikapaion have yielded several beautiful wreaths of ivy and ears of
corn; a gold imitation of a crown of myrtle has been found in a grave
in Ithaka. Other specimens from Greek and Roman graves are preserved
in our museums. A golden crown of Greek workmanship, found at Armento,
a village of the Basilicata (at present in Munich), is particularly
remarkable. A twig of oak forms the ground, from among the thin golden
leaves of which spring forth asters with chalices of blue enamel,
convolvulus, narcissus, ivy, roses, and myrtle, gracefully
intertwined. On the upper bend of the crown is the image of a winged
goddess, from the head of which, among pieces of grass, rises the
slender stalk of a rose. Four naked male genii and two draped female
ones, floating over the flowers, point towards the goddess, who stands
on a pedestal bearing an inscription.

Greek, particularly Athenian, women carried a sunshade, or employed
slaves to hold it over them. In the Panathenaic procession even the
daughters of metoikoi had to perform this service. Such sunshades,
which, like our own, could be shut by means of wires, we often see
depicted on vases and Etruscan mirrors. This form was undoubtedly the
most common one. The cap-like sunshade painted on a skyphos, which a
Silenus, instead