Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, BOOK XXI. AN ACCOUNT OF FLOWERS. AND THOSE USED FOR CHAPLETS MORE PARTICULARLY., CHAP. 3.—WHO INVENTED THE ART OF MAKING GARLANDS: WHEN THEY FIRST RECEIVED THE NAME OF "COROLLÆ," AND FOR WHAT REASON.

For in early times it was the usage to crown the victors in the sacred contests with branches of trees: and it was only at a later period, that they began to vary their tints by the combination¹ of flowers, to heighten the effect in turn by their colour and their smell—an invention due to the ingenuity of the painter Pausias, at Sicyon,² and the garland-maker Glyccra, a female to whom he was greatly attached, and whose handiwork was imitated by him in colours. Challenging him to a trial of skill, she would repeatedly vary her designs, and thus it was in reality a contest between art and Nature; a fact which we find attested by pictures of that artist even still in existence, more particularly the one known as the "Stephane- plocos,"³ in which he has given a likeness of Glycera herself. This invention, therefore, is only to be traced to later than the Hundredth⁴ Olympiad.

Chaplets of flowers being now the fashion, it was not long before those came into vogue which are known to us as Egyptian⁵ chaplets; and then the winter chaplets, made for the time at which Earth refuses her flowers, of thin laminæ of horn stained various colours. By slow degrees, too, the name was introduced at Rome, these garlands being known there at first as "corollæ," a designation given them to express the remarkable delicacy⁶ of their texture. In more recent times, again, when the chaplets presented were made of thin plates⁷ of copper, gilt or silvered, they assumed the name of "corollaria."

1 These chaplets, we learn from Festus, were called "pancarpiæ." The olive, oak, laurel, and myrtle, were the trees first used for chaplets.

2 See B. xxxv. c. 40.

3 The "Chaplet-weaver." Sec B. xxxv. c. 40.

4 B.C. 380.

5 From Athenæus, B. xv. c. 2, et seq., we learn that the Egyptian chaplets were made of ivy, narcissus, pomegranate blossoms, &c.

6 "Corolla," being the diminutive of "corona."

7 Or tinsel.

The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855.

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Pliny the Elder, The Natural History
John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.

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CHAP. 3.—WHO INVENTED THE ART OF MAKING GARLANDS: WHEN THEY FIRST RECEIVED THE NAME OF "COROLLÆ," AND FOR WHAT REASON.

Pliny the Elder, The Natural History John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.