The Isthmian garland I will sell as cheap As common wreaths of parsley may be sold. And Timaeus the historian says that, when the Corinthians were marching to fight the Carthaginians in the defence of Sicily, some persons carrying parsley met them, and when several looked upon this as a bad omen,—because parsley is accounted unlucky, and those that are dangerously sick we usually say have need of parsley,—Timoleon encouraged them by putting them in mind of the Isthmian parsley garland with which the Corinthians used to crown the conquerors. And besides, the admiral-ship of Antigonus’s navy, having by chance some parsley growing on its poop, was called Isthmia. Besides, a certain obscure epigram upon an earthen vessel stopped with parsley intimates the same thing. It runs thus: The Grecian earth, now hardened by the flame, Holds in its hollow belly Bacchus’ blood; And hath its mouth with Isthmian branches stopped. Sure, he continued, they never read these authors, who cry up the pine as anciently wreathed in the Isthmian garlands, and would not have it some upstart intruder. The young men yielded presently to him, as being a man of various reading and very learned. 3. But Lucanius, with a smile looking upon me, cried out: Good God! here’s a deal of learning. But others have taken advantage of our ignorance and unacquaintedness with such matters, and, on the contrary, persuaded us that the pine was the first garland, and that afterwards in honor of Hercules the parsley was received from the Nemean games, which in a little time prevailing, thrust out the pine, as if it were its right to be the wreath; but a little while after the pine recovered its ancient honor, and now flourishes in its glory. I was satisfied, and upon consideration found that I had met with a great many authorities for it. Thus Euphorion writes of Melicertes, They mourned the youth, and him on pine boughs laid Of which the Isthmian victors’ crowns are made. Fate had not yet seized beauteous Mene’s son By smooth Asopus; since whose fall the crown Of parsley wreathed did grace the victor’s brow. And Callimachus is plainer and more express, when he makes Hercules speak thus of parsley, This at Isthmian games To Neptune’s glory now shall be the crown; The pine shall be disused, which heretofore In Corinth’s plains successful victors wore. And beside, if I am not mistaken, in Procles’s history of the Isthmian games I met with this passage; at first a pine garland crowned the conqueror, but when this game began to be reckoned amongst the sacred, then from the Nemean solemnity the parsley was received. And this Procles was one of Xenocrates’s fellow-students at the Academy. _QUESTION IV._ CONCERNING THAT EXPRESSION IN HOMER, ζωρότερον δὲ κέραιε.[84] NICERATUS, SOSICLES, ANTIPATER, PLUTARCH.