In classical and late antiquity wreaths or crowns (; ) usually made of vegetation or precious metals were worn on ceremonial occasions and were awarded for various achievements. The symbolism of these different types of wreaths depended on their composition; different crowns were worn and awarded for different purposes. Such wreaths or crowns were represented in classical architecture, in ancient Greek art and sculpture, and in Roman art and sculpture. As well as being awarded for merit and military conduct, they were worn by orators, priests performing sacrifices, by the chorus in ancient Greek drama, and by attendees of a symposium.
From Archaic Greece until late antiquity, wreaths were the prizes competed for at the Panhellenic Games – the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian Games – the "crown games", each with a different vegetation crown awarded. In the military of ancient Rome, wreaths were among the traditional Roman military decorations; as a result of the revival in ancient artistic and literary models in the Renaissance they are frequently encountered in Western art and heraldry.
Wreaths of leaves from laurel, olive, oak, myrtle, and celery were particularly symbolically significant, with the laurel wreath the victor's crown at the Pythian Games and at a Roman triumph, and the olive wreath the prize at the Olympic Games. Symposiasts wore crowns of roses, while maenads and other followers of Dionysus wore wreaths of ivy or of vine leaves. The highest martial distinction possible in the Roman state was a wreath of grass. In Classical Greece, gold crowns were commonly sent – and recorded in inscriptions – as tribute to the renowned shrines of Delos and Athens by members of the Delian League. Until Late Antiquity, gold crowns became a tribute demanded by the Roman Empire from cities under its rule. In such cases, an actual crown was frequently never made and the nominal value was often paid in silver.
Function
As can be inferred from Apuleius's The Golden Ass and Aristophanes's Plutus, to wear a wreath was a sign of distinction, and an assault on a wreath's wearer was considered especially blameworthy. According to Tertullian's De corona, the wearing of wreaths was an ancient practice. Indeed, it was rare for religious rites and cult practices to omit the wearing of wreaths. Priests wore wreaths for the performance of sacrifices, as did other participants in the ceremony and the sacrificial victim. Similarly, altars, statues, and religious buildings and accoutrements could all be wreathed. Wreaths were sacred objects, and removing one and disposing of it could not be done casually or without due reverence, neither could an unauthorized person wear one without committing sacrilege.
Different wreaths were worn, depending on the god or goddess to be propitiated. Laurel wreaths were appropriate Apollo and his father Zeus (Jupiter), as well as for Aphrodite (Venus). The mother-and-daughter fertility goddesses Demeter and Persephone (Ceres and Proserpina) were honoured with crowns of ears of corn. The cult of Dionysus (Bacchus) was associated with wreaths of ivy and vines.
Besides sacrificial rituals, festival rites of marriage, birth, and death all involved wreaths. As in Catullus's Poem 61 and Apuleius's The Golden Ass, couples to be married were both wreathed on the occasion. To mark the occasion of a new birth, the household would hang a wreath of olive or wool on the door. As part of ancient funerary practice, the death were wreathed, funerary urns were wreathed, and wreaths were lain on and within tombs. Euripides's The Trojan Women, Athenaeus's Deipnosophistae, and Pliny's Natural History all include references to the dead as wreathed, while Pliny even mentions a raven, celebrated talking as a talking bird, being awarded wreaths at its lavish funeral. Funerary monuments might be painted with wreaths as well as hung with them, and from the Hellenistic period, wreaths awarded to the deceased during a lifetime could be carved on the monument marking the grave.
According to the Deipnosophistae, it was the god Dionysus that introduced the practice of wearing wreaths at symposia; he had worn an ivy wreath to ward off the ill-effects of drinking wine. Wreaths of roses, violets, or myrtle leaves were also appropriate to be worn by symposiasts. The vessels from which wine was distributed to the attendees were themselves wreathed. According to Petronius's Satyricon, even the hands and feet of symposiasts might be wreathed. A wreath might be left as a token of love on the door of the object of one's affections on the night-time ritual procession that followed (a komos), as in the Palatine Anthology and in the work of Theocritus.