The National tribune., 1903-05-28

places. Inc AnclentS were carelui W it-
new the plants placed about the sepul-
chral urn, so that each season the tomb
might be surrounded by continual Spring.
These flowers were regarded as sacred
and as a relic of the deceased. The re-
mans considered this care so agreeable to
the departed that wealthy citizens be-
Queathed by will entire gardens to be
reserved for furnishing their tombs with
flowers. They also often ordered that
their heirs, or those whom they left
legacy for the care of their ashes, should
meet together every year on the anniver-
sary of their death and dine near their
tomb, scattering roses about the place. In
scriptions TO this effect are yet decipher-
able. On a tomb near Venice there is such
an inscription. mentioning n donation made
by an emancipated slave to the Assembly
of the Cantum, consisting of gardens and
a building, to be employed in celebrating
his obscquies on each returning anniver-
sary and his masters as well. He re-
quested that roses should not be spared.
Generally donation made thus was trans
ferred by provisions in the will to another
in case the benefited failed to cover the
funeral monument with roses at the prop
er time. A terrible curse was supposed
to attend violation of these sacred gar
dens.
Those among the Romans not rich
enough to make such bequests often di-
rected to be engraved upon the stone
above them request to passersby to scat
ter roses upon their tombs. Pliny relates
of one of the ilustrious Scipios that while
he was Tribune he fulfilled his duties to
the satisfaction Of the people, but when he
died had nothing left with which to pay
his funeral expenses. The people vOlun-
tarily contributed to pay them, and spent
a vast sum for flowers to cast under the
funeral fra in and uDOn his tomb
Antony, when he had suffered the de-
feat at Actium, which drove him to sui
eide, asked that Cleopatra scatter perfume
over his tomb and cover it with roses.
Paris at the tomb of Juliet says:
"Sweet flower. with flowers thy bridal
bed / strew;
o. woe, thy canopy is dust and stones,
Which with sweet water nightly l will
dew.
Or wanting that, with tears distilled by
moans;
The obsequies that for thee will keep,
Nightly shall be to strew thy grave and
weep"
Jerome, one of the early Christian Faith
ers, wrote as follows of the Memorial Gus
toms which had thus descended to the Cap
ulets and Montagues: 1.-The Ancients scat
tered roses over the urns of the deceased
and in their wills ordered that these flow
ers should adorn their graves and should
be renewed every year. 1t was also the
custom for husbands to cast yiolets, roses
and lilies on the urnS which enclosed the
ashes of their wives. These modest flow
ers were emblematic signs of their grief.
Our Christians were content to place a
rose among the ornaments Of their graves
as the image of life"
This love Of the rose was universal.
Ap1crou of tho rose and Ipath-
"When pain afflicts and sickness grieves
Its juice the dropping heart relieves,
And after death its odors shed
\ pleasing fragrance DER the dead"
Another poet promises dead love
''Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers
be dressed
And the green turf lie lightly on thy
breast;
There shall the morn her earliest tears
bestow,
There the first roses of the year shall
blow"
And Virgil writes of Achilles at the
tomb of Marcellus:
Full cansters Of fragrant lilies bring
Mixed with the purple roses of the Spring.
Let them with funereal flowers his body
strew."
The amaranth, because Of its unfading
beauty, was priced as a funereal flower
by the Ancients. The Greeks used it Law
shly, and it was in HOmer's time Gus
tomary to wear crowns of amaranth at
the funerals of distinguished personages.
Homer describes the Thessalonians as
wearing amaranth crowns at the entomb-
ment of Achilles. Wordsworth writes of
the "Amaranthine flower of faith"-
''Wreaths that endure affliction's heavi-
est shower.
And do not shrink from sorrows keenest
wind"
The Romans burned Juniper berries about
their dead, believing that the fumes be-
numbed the influence of malign spirits.
The early Greeks and Romans also Of
fered poppies on the shrine of the dead.
They crowned Sleep with poppies, and in
their mythology, Death was the child of
Night and the twin brother of Sleep.
"Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable
Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born"
They deemed that the poppy, with it's
sense-subduing smell, brought consolation
to all concerned.
Many beautiful myths connect the birth
of flowers with the death Of the young,
and since from innocence the children Of
Nature sprung, 1T seems fitting that they
should in turn become the tribute of love
to innocence in death.
''There were no flowers until the first child
died.
No balmy breathed heartsease; no roses,"
wrote one sweet singer; and this from
Omar Khayyam is in the same lovely
strain:
Il sometimes think that never blows so
red
The rose as where some buried Cesar bled,
That every hyacnth the garden wears
Dropped in her lap from some once-lovely
head"
Shakspere follows out the idea at the
grave of Ophelia, and shows that Den
mark accepted the beautiful symbol when
.Laertes is made to say:
Lay her i the earth
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May viOlets spring."
Tennyson, in his 'In Memoriam," para
phrased Shakspere-
"And from his ashes may be made
The violet Of his native land"
The burial customs Of the early Eng
lish were evidently adapted from those of
the Greeks and Romans, more especially
those pertaining to flowers.