All nations at different periods seem to have delighted to deck the graves of their departed relatives with garlands of flowers—emblems at once of beauty and quick fading into death.
“With fairest flowers
While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I’ll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack
The flower that’s like thy face, pale Primrose; nor
The azured Hare-bell, like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of Eglantine, which, not to slander,
Out-sweetened not thy breath.”
Shakspeare (Cymbeline, Act IV.).
The flowers strewed over graves by the Greeks were the Amaranth, Myrtle, and Polyanthus. The practice was reprobated by the primitive Christians; but in Prudentius’s time they had adopted it, and it is expressly mentioned both by St. Ambrose and St. Jerome. The flowers so used were deemed typical of the dead: to the young were assigned the blossoms of Spring and Summer: to middle-age, aromatic herbs and branches of primeval trees.