By the Romans a peculiar reverence seems to have attached to their
festive garlands, which were considered unsuitable for wearing in
public. Hence, any person appearing in one was liable to punishment, a
law which was carried out with much rigour. On one occasion, Lucius
Fulvius, a banker, having been convicted at the time of the second Punic
war, of looking down from the balcony of a house with a chaplet of roses
on his head, was thrown into prison by order of the Senate, and here
kept for sixteen years, until the close of the war. A further case of
extreme severity was that of P. Munatius, who was condemned by the
Triumviri to be put in chains for having crowned himself with flowers
from the statue of Marsyas.

Allusions to such estimation of garlands in olden times are numerous in
the literature of the past, and it may be remembered how Montesquieu
remarked that it was with two or three hundred crowns of oak that Rome
conquered the world.

Guests at feasts wore garlands of flowers tied with the bark of the
linden tree, to prevent intoxication; the wreath having been framed in
accordance with the position of the wearer. A poet, in his paraphrase on
Horace, thus illustrates this custom:--

"Nay, nay, my boy, 'tis not for me
This studious pomp of Eastern luxury;
Give me no various garlands fine
With linden twine;
Nor seek where latest lingering blows
The solitary rose."