he ought to give this flower the name of the Flower of Antinous, as having sprung from the ground where it drank in the blood of the Mauritanian lion, which Hadrian killed when he was out hunting in that part of Africa, near Alexandria; a monstrous beast which had ravaged all Libya for a long time, so as to make a very great part of the district desolate. Accordingly, Hadrian being delighted with the utility of the invention, and also with its novelty, granted to the poet that he should be maintained for the future in the Museum at the public expense; and Cratinus the comic poet, in his Ulysseses, has called the lotus [Greek: stephanôma], because all plants which are full of leaf, are called [Greek: stephanômata] by the Athenians. But Pancrates said, with a good deal of neatness, in his poem—
The crisp ground thyme, the snow-white lily too,
The purple hyacinth, and the modest leaves
Of the white celandine, and the fragrant rose,
Whose petals open to the vernal zephyrs;
For that fair flower which bears Antinous' name
The earth had not yet borne.
22. There is the word [Greek: pyleôn]. And this is the name given to the garland which the Lacedæmonians place on the head of Juno, as Pamphilus relates.
I am aware, also, that there is a kind of garland, which is called [Greek: Iakchas] by the Sicyonians, as Timachidas mentions in his treatise on Dialects. And Philetas writes as follows:— "[Greek: Iakcha]—this is a name given to a fragrant garland in the district of Sicyon—
She stood by her sire, and in her fragrant hair
She wore the beautiful Iacchian garland."
Seleucus also, in his treatise on Dialects, says, that there is a kind of garland made of myrtle, which is called [Greek: Ellôtis], being twenty cubits in circumference, and that it is carried in procession on the festival of the Ellotia. And he says, that in this garland the bones of Europa, whom they call Ellotis, are carried. And this festival of the Ellotia is celebrated in Corinth.
There is also the [Greek: Thyreatikos]. This also is a name given to a species of garland by the Lacedæmonians, as Sosibius tells us in his treatise on Sacrifices, where he says, that now it is called [Greek: psilinos], being made of branches of the palm-tree. And he says that they are worn, as a memorial of the victory which they gained, in Thyrea,[1] by the leaders of the choruses,
- ↑ See the account of this battle, Herod, i. 82.
