Of pliant osier, drinking wine
Whose colour did like rubies shine."
15. And the Gods know that I first found all this out in the beautiful city of Alexandria, having got possession of the treatise of Menodotus, in which I showed to many people the passage in Anacreon which is the subject of discussion. But Hephæstion, who is always charging every one else with thefts, took this solution of mine, and claimed it as his own, and published an essay, to which he gave this title, "Concerning the Osier Garland mentioned by Anacreon." And a copy of this essay we lately found at Rome in the possession of the antiquary Demetrius. And this compiler Hephæstion behaved in the same way to our excellent friend Adrantus. For after he had published a treatise in five books, Concerning those Matters in Theophrastus in his books on Manners, which are open to any Dispute, either as to their Facts, or the Style in which they are mentioned; and had added a sixth book Concerning the Disputable Points in the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle; and in these books had entered into a long dissertation on the mention of Plexippus by Antipho the tragic poet, and had also said a good deal about Antipho himself; Hephæstion, I say, appropriated all these books to himself, and wrote another book, Concerning the Mention of Antipho in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, not having added a single discovery or original observation of his own, any more than he had in the discussion on the Osier Garland. For the only thing he said that was new, was that Phylarchus, in the seventh book of his Histories, mentioned this story about the osier, and knew nothing of the passage of Nicænetus, nor of that of Anacreon; and he showed that he differed in some respects from the account that had been given by Menodotus.
But one may explain this fact of the osier garlands more simply, by saying that Megisthes wore a garland of osier because there was a great quantity of those trees in the place where he was feasting; and therefore he used it to bind his 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 ὑποθυμιάδες, as Alcæus does in these lines—
Let every one twine round his neck