191
applied with rose oil; and employed with raisin wine, it is good for pains in the ears, and all kinds of swellings or eruptions on the hands. A decoction of it in wine, or else the plant itself beaten up raw, is good for pains in the stomach.”
Concerning the use of chaplets in the Roman world, Pliny gives many details (XXI, 1-10). The chaplet was a crown of honor given the victors in the sacred games. Originally laurel and other tree foliage was used; flowers were added by the painter Pausias, at Sicyon, about 380 B. C. Then came the “Egyptian chaplet” of ivy, narcissus, and pomegranate blossoms, and then a durable article of thin laminas of horn, and of leaves of gold, silver, or tinsel, plain or embossed.
Chaplets were won by personal prowess in the games, or by that of slaves or horses entered by the winner, and gave the victor ‘ ‘the right, for himself and for his parents, after death, to be crowned without fail, while the body was laid out in the house, and on its being carried to the tomb. On other occasions, chaplets were not indiscriminately worn.
The use of chaplets by those not entitled to them was forbidden by law, and Pliny cites several cases of punishment for the offence.
Chaplets were used also in honor of the gods, the Lares, the sepulchres and the Manes; this custom still surviving in the laying of immortelles on tombs of departed friends.
“Atque aliquis senior veteres veneratus amores,
Annua constructo serta dabit tumulo.”
— Tibullus, II, 4.
For such uses the plaited chaplet, the rose chaplet, and various devices embroidered by hand, came into use, and Pliny notes that in his time there was a demand for chaplets imported from India, made of nard leaves on fabrics, “or else of silk of many colors steeped in unguents. Such is the pitch to which the luxuriousness of our women has at last arrived ! ’ ’
It would seem as if this sweet clover might also be intended for the manufacture of chaplets for re-exportation to Rome.
49. Realgar. — The text is sandarake. This is the red sulphide of arsenic. It was principally from Persia and Carmania, and reached India from various Persian Gulf ports. In modern times both realgar and orpiment are produced in large quantities in Burma and China, where it is not impossible that production existed at the time of the Periplus.
Pliny (XXXIV, 55) says “the redder it is the more pure and friable, and the more powerful its odor the better it is in quality. It
