Latin Texts & Translations

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 combination ^[Note] 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, ^[Note] 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," ^[Note] in which he has given a likeness of Glycera herself. This invention, therefore, is only to be traced to later than the Hundredth ^[Note] Olympiad.

Chaplets of flowers being now the fashion, it was not long before those came into vogue which are known to us as

Egyptian ^[Note] 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 delicacy ^[Note] of their texture. In more recent times, again, when the chaplets presented were made of thin plates ^[Note] of copper, gilt or silvered, they assumed the name of "corollaria."