SUB ROSA.
But when we with caution a secret disclose,
We cry, “Be it spoken, sir, under the rose.”
Since ’tis known that the rose was an emblem of old,
Whose leaves by their closeness taught secrets to hold;
And ’twas thence it was painted on tables so oft
As a warning, lest, when with a frankness men scoft
At their neighbor, their lord, their fat priest, or their nation,
Some among ’em next day should betray conversation.
British Apollo, 1708.
The origin of the phrase under the rose implies secrecy, and had its origin during the year B.C. 477, at which time Pausanias, the commander of the confederate fleet of the Spartans and Athenians, was engaged in an intrigue with Xerxes for the subjugation of Greece to the Persian rule, and for the hand of the monarch’s daughter in marriage. Their negotiations were carried on in a building attached to the temple of Minerva, called the Brazen House, the roof of which was a garden forming a bower of roses; so that the plot, which was conducted with the utmost secrecy, was literally matured under the rose. Pausanias, however, was betrayed by one of his emissaries, who, by a preconcerted plan with the ephori, (the overseers and counsellors of state, five in number,) gave them a secret opportunity to hear from the lips of Pausanias himself the acknowledgment of his treason. To escape arrest, he fled to the temple of Minerva, and, as the sanctity of the place forbade intrusion for violence or harm of any kind, the people walled up the edifice with stones and left him to die of starvation. His own mother laid the first stone.
It afterward became a custom among the Athenians to wear roses in their hair whenever they wished to communicate to another a secret which they wished to be kept inviolate. Hence the saying sub rosa among them, and, since, among Christian nations.