A branch of olive then I wreathed around thee,
Plucked from that tree which from Minerva’s rock
First sprung; if it be there it still retains
Its verdure; for the foliage of that olive,
Fresh in immortal beauty, never fades.[306]
This, and the sacred bandelettes, were always the symbols of inviolability.
This final act of maternal affection, characteristic of both the human and the barbaric side of Greek parents, became, in time, a widespread custom. When the child was exposed, there was generally placed alongside of it a small basket or collection of trinkets. The royal daughter of Erechtheus attached to the neck of her son many precious ornaments, including a serpent of massive gold. The shepherd Laymonde found on Daphnis a clasp of gold and a small ivory sword. Among the very poor, hand-made collars, shoulder straps, with various trinkets of little worth, were used to mark the infant.
In all this, dramatists saw but a means to establish the identity of the hero and heroine and an assistance to the dénouement. The ceremony, with its pathos and its strangeness, was, to tragic as well as to comic writers, but a means to end the fifth act. The pity of it all never seems to have occurred to the Greek mind.
It was rare that the father or the child-mother who renounced the infant had any real desire to find it when better days came. The real wish was that the child might be taken up by some stranger before death came and the trinkets were an inducement to befriend the child.
If, on the other hand, the child should die, the feeling was that these ornaments would assure for it a happy life on the other side of the Styx.