GARLANDS.
Phœbus doth teach that song to the Tyndaridæ,
Which tuneless grasshoppers have crown'd with a [Greek: chorônos].
There are [Greek: akinioi] too. There are some garlands made of the basil thyme ([Greek: akinos]) which are called by this name, as we are told by Andron the physician, whose words are quoted by Parthenius the pupil of Dionysius, in the first book of his treatise on the Words which occur in the Historians.
27. Now Theophrastus gives the following list of flowers as suitable to be made into garlands—"The violet, the flower of Jupiter, the iphyum, the wallflower, the hemerocalles, or yellow lily. But he says the earliest blooming flower is the white violet; and about the same time that which is called the wild wallflower appears, and after them the narcissus and the lily; and of mountain flowers, that kind of anemone which is called the mountain anemone, and the head of the bulb-plant. For some people twine these flowers into garlands. And next to these there comes the œnanthe and the purple violet. And of wild flowers, there are the helichryse, and that species of anemone called the meadow anemone, and the gladiolus, and the hyacinth. But the rose is the latest blooming flower of all; and it is the latest to appear and the first to go off. But the chief summer flowers are the lychnis, and the flower of Jupiter, and the lily, and the iphyum, and the Phrygian amaracus, and also the flower called the pothus." And in his ninth book the same Theophrastus says, if any one wears a garland made of the flower of the helichryse, he is praised if he sprinkle it with ointment. And Alcman mentions it in these lines—
And I pray to you, and bring
This chaplet of the helichryse,
And of the holy cypirus.
And Ibycus says—
Myrtle-berries with violets mix'd,
And helichryse, and apple blossoms,
And roses, and the tender daphne.
And Cratinus, in his Effeminate People, says—
With ground thyme and with crocuses,
And hyacinths, and helichryse.
But the helichryse is a flower like the lotus. And Themistagoras the Ephesian, in his book entitled The Golden Book, says that the flower derives its name from the nymph who
