In those days, too, chaplets were employed in honour of the gods, the Lares, public as well as domestic, the sepulchres,[1870] and the Manes. The highest place, however, in public estimation, was held by the plaited chaplet; such as we find used by the Salii in their sacred rites, and at the solemnization of their yearly[1871] banquets. In later times, the rose chaplet has been adopted, and luxury arose at last to such a pitch that a chaplet was held in no esteem at all if it did not consist entirely of leaves sown together with the needle. More recently, again, they have been imported from India, or from nations beyond the countries of India. But it is looked upon as the most refined of all, to present chaplets made of nard leaves, or else of silk of many colours steeped in unguents. Such is the pitch to which the luxuriousness of our women has at last arrived! CHAP. 9.—AUTHORS WHO HAVE WRITTEN ON FLOWERS. AN ANECDOTE RELATIVE TO QUEEN CLEOPATRA AND CHAPLETS. Among the Greeks, the physicians Mnesitheus and Callimachus have written separate treatises on the subject of chaplets, making mention of such flowers as are injurious to the head.[1872] For, in fact, the health is here concerned to some extent, as it is at the moments of carousal and gaiety in particular that penetrating odours steal insidiously upon the brain—witness an instance in the wicked cunning displayed upon one occasion by Cleopatra. At the time when preparations were making for the battle that was eventually fought at Actium, Antonius held the queen in such extreme distrust as to be in dread of her very attentions even, and would not so much as touch his food, unless another person had tasted it first. Upon this, the queen, it is said, wishing to amuse herself with his fears, had the extremities of the flowers in a chaplet dipped in poison, and then placed it upon her head.[1873] After a time, as the hilarity increased apace, she challenged Antonius to swallow the chaplets, mixed up with their drink. Who, under such circumstances as these, could have apprehended treachery? Accordingly, the leaves were stripped from off the chaplet, and thrown into the cup. Just as Antonius was on the very point of drinking, she arrested his arm with her hand.—“Behold, Marcus Antonius,” said she, “the woman against whom you are so careful to take these new precautions of yours in employing your tasters! And would then, if I could exist without you, either means or opportunity of effecting my purpose be wanting to me?” Saying this, she ordered a man to be brought from prison, and made him drink off the potion; he did so, and fell dead[1874] upon the spot.