temples. For the Lacedæmonians at the festival of the Promachia, wear garlands of reeds, as Sosibius tells us in his treatise on the Sacrificial Festivals at Lacedæmon, where he writes thus: "On this festival the natives of the country all wear garlands of reeds, or tiaras, but the boys who have been brought up in the public school follow without any garland at all."
16. But Aristotle, in the second book of his treatise on Love Affairs, and Ariston the Peripatetic, who was a native of Ceos, in the second book of his Amatory Resemblances, say that "The ancients, on account of the headaches which were produced by their wine-drinking, adopted the practice of wearing garlands made of anything which came to hand, as the binding the head tight appeared to be of service to them. But men in later times added also some ornaments to their temples, which had a kind of reference to their employment of drinking, and so they invented garlands in the present fashion. But it is more reasonable to suppose that it was because the head is the seat of all sensation that men wore crowns upon it, than that they did so because it was desirable to have their temples shaded and bound as a remedy against the headaches produced by wine."
They also wore garlands over their foreheads, as the sweet Anacreon says—
And placing on our brows fresh parsley crowns,
Let's honour Bacchus with a jovial feast.
They also wore garlands on their breasts, and anointed them with perfume, because that is the seat of the heart. And they call the garlands which they put round their necks [Greek: hypothymiades], as Alcæus does in these lines—
Let every one twine round his neck
Wreathed [Greek: hypothymiades] of anise.
And Sappho says—
And wreathed [Greek: hypothymiades]
In numbers round their tender throats.
And Anacreon says—
They placed upon their bosoms lotus flowers
Entwined in fragrant [Greek: hypothymiades].
Æschylus also, in his Prometheus Unbound, says distinctly—
And therefore we, in honour of Prometheus,
Place garlands on our heads, a poor atonement
For the sad chains with which his limbs were bound.
