One of the principal causes which induced the Greeks to attend to the culture of ornamental shrubs and flowers, was the perpetual use made of them in crowns and garlands.[1258] Nearly all their ceremonies, whether civil or religious, were performed by individuals wearing certain wreaths about their brow. Thus the Spartans, during the Promachian festival,[1259] shaded their foreheads with plaited tufts of reeds—priests and priestesses, soothsayers,[1260] prophets, and enchanters, appeared in their several capacities before the gods in temples or sacred groves with symbolical crowns encircling their heads, as the priests of Hera, at Samos, with laurel,[1261] and those of Aphrodite with myrtle,[1262] while the statues of the divinities themselves were often crowned with circlets of these “earthly stars.” In the festival of Europa, at Corinth, a crown of myrtle, thirty feet in circumference, was borne in procession through the city.[1263] The actors, dancers, and spectators of the theatre usually appeared crowned with flowers,[1264] as did every guest at an entertainment, while lovers suspended a profusion of garlands on the doors of their mistresses, as did the devout on the temples and altars of the gods.[1265] ----- Footnote 1258: Πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἀφ’ ὧν ζῶσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι, ταῦτα ἡ γῆ φέρει ἐργαζομένοις· καὶ ἀφ’ ὧν τοίνυν ἡδυπαθοῦσι προσεπιφέρει.—Ἔπειτα δὲ ὅσα κοσμοῦσι βωμοὺς και ἀγάλματα, καὶ οἷς αὐτοὶ κοσμοῦνται, καὶ ταῦτα μετὰ ἡδίστων ὀσμῶν καὶ θεαμάτων παρέχει. κ. τ. λ. Xenoph. Œconom. v. 2, seq.