This custom of making offerings to the tree is no doubt of great antiquity. In the legend of the Golden Fleece, Phryxus, having been carried by the fabled ram across the Hellespont, sacrificed it to Ares, and hung its priceless fleece on the boughs of a sacred beech-tree,[98] whence it was subsequently recovered by Jason. Such dedication at the shrines of the gods of something that had been of service and still had value to the worshipper, was very common in Greek and Roman worship, and in many cases the tree was the recipient of the gift.[99] The rich brought their jewels, the poor their homely tools and utensils. The fisherman dedicated his nets in gratitude for an exceptional catch. The shepherd offered his flute as a welcome gift to Pan. Some of the dedicatory inscriptions preserve for us the pathos of the gift. “Daphnis, the flute-player, bowed with shaking age, has here dedicated his shepherd’s staff, too heavy for his weak hand, to meadow-loving Pan.”[100] Lais, grown old, hangs her too truthful mirror on the sacred tree of Aphrodite. “Take it, O lovely Cytherea; to thee alone is undying beauty given.”[101] In the same way Bacchic revellers, their frenzy past, brought to the tree the cymbals, robes, and perfumed tresses they had used.[102] There is further evidence of the sanctity of the tree in the important function given to branches and wreaths in religious ceremonies, a custom which can find logical explanation only in a precedent tree-worship deeply rooted in the popular mind. In the service of the gods of Greece and Rome the wreath was indispensable. An uncrowned worshipper was in the position of the man in the parable who had no wedding garment. And the wreath must have been taken from the particular tree of the god worshipped, so that the worshipper might be placed in closest communion with the deity, and remain inviolate from molestation while thus clothed with the divine protection.[103] The carrying of the sacred branch in solemn procession formed the essential feature in some of the most important religious festivals of Greece. At the Daphnephoria, held every nine years at Thebes in Boeotia in honour of Apollo, the chief post in the procession was held by the Daphnephorus, or laurel-bearer, a boy chosen for his strength and beauty. He was followed to the temple of the god by a chorus of maidens, also bearing branches and chanting a processional hymn, and was regarded for the occasion as the priest of Apollo, who himself bore amongst his many other appellations that of Daphnephorus, because he had brought the laurel to Delphi and planted it there.[104]