The crowning with flowers was a high honor to Athenian citizens--awarded, for instance, to Perikles, but refused to Miltiades. The head and bier of the dead were also crowned with fresh wreaths of myrtle and ivy.
The luxury of later times changed the wreaths of flowers for golden ones, with regard to the dead of the richer classes. Wreaths made of thin gold have repeatedly been found in graves. The barrows of the old Pantikapaion have yielded several beautiful wreaths of ivy and ears of corn; a gold imitation of a crown of myrtle has been found in a grave in Ithaka. Other specimens from Greek and Roman graves are preserved in our museums. A golden crown of Greek workmanship, found at Armento, a village of the Basilicata (at present in Munich), is particularly remarkable. A twig of oak forms the ground, from among the thin golden leaves of which spring forth asters with chalices of blue enamel, convolvulus, narcissus, ivy, roses, and myrtle, gracefully intertwined. On the upper bend of the crown is the image of a winged goddess, from the head of which, among pieces of grass, rises the slender stalk of a rose. Four naked male genii and two draped female ones, floating over the flowers, point towards the goddess, who stands on a pedestal bearing an inscription.
Greek, particularly Athenian, women carried a sunshade, or employed slaves to hold it over them. In the Panathenaic procession even the daughters of metoikoi had to perform this service. Such sunshades, which, like our own, could be shut by means of wires, we often see depicted on vases and Etruscan mirrors. This form was undoubtedly the most common one. The cap-like sunshade painted on a skyphos, which a Silenus, instead of a servant, holds over a dignified lady walking in front of him, is undoubtedly intended as a parody, perhaps copied from the scene of a comedy. In vase paintings we also see frequently the leaf-like painted fan in the hands of women.
[Illustration: TOILET ARTICLES FOUND AT POMPEII.]
The above articles were in good preservation when found. _a_, _l_, _n_, are hand-mirrors; _m_, is a wall-mirror; _c_, toilet-box, made of ivory and beautifully carved; _d_ and _k_, bronze combs; _i_, fine comb; _b_, ear and tooth-pick; _f_, pin-box, with glass and steel pins; _h_, salve-box; _g_, hair-pins made of ivory and gold; _e_, is a powder or paint-box.
