At the Pyanepsia and the Thargelia, two important Athenian festivals, the _Eiresione_, a harvest wreath of olive or laurel bound round with red and white wool, and hung with the choicest first-fruits, was borne about by singing boys, while offerings were made to the gods.[105] A vine branch with the grapes upon it gave its name to another Athenian festival, the Oschophoria, or grape carrying, held in honour of Dionysus. A race between chosen youths formed one of the events of the festival, the competitors running from the temple of Dionysus to that of Athena, with boughs in their hands.[106] Apart, however, from these important festivals, the use of wreaths or branches was a familiar incident in the daily life of the Greeks, bearing with it always a sort of religious significance. The bringer of good news was rewarded with a wreath; the guests at a feast were crowned with flowers. No gift to the gods was complete without its floral accompaniment, and their statues were often hidden under the wreaths brought thither as the most acceptable offering. It can scarcely be doubted that this lavish employment of blossom and leaf as the expression of a religious emotion originally sprang from reverence for the tree as the favourite home of a god. The Greeks, with their instinctive love for all things beautiful, naturally pushed this graceful custom further than other races. But the ceremonial use of branches and flowers was common throughout the East. The Chaldaean sacred texts mention the use of “green branches” in religious ceremonies.[107] At the Feast of Tabernacles the Israelites were enjoined to “take the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm-trees, and the boughs of thick trees and willows of the brook, and rejoice before the Lord.”[108] The Apocrypha mentions the “festal olive boughs of the Temple.”[109] In Persia and Armenia it was customary to bear a branch when approaching the god. In Egypt Isis was worshipped with sprays of absinthe, palm-branches were carried in funeral processions, and lotus wreaths usually worn at feasts, whilst in the Assyrian sculptures illustrious persons are frequently represented holding a flower.[110]