Rosalia (festival)#Rose Sundays

File:The Roses of Heliogabalus.jpg (1888) by Lawrence Alma-Tadema: "suffocation by erotically charged flowers" became a topos of the late 19th centuryCristina Mazzoni, Saint Hysteria: Neurosis, Mysticism, and Gender in European Culture (Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 142.]]

In Greece and Rome, wreaths and garlands of flowers and greenery were worn by both men and women for festive occasions.Mireille M. Lee, "Clothing," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, p. 231. Garlands of roses and violets, combined or singly, adorn erotic scenes, bridal processions, and drinking parties in Greek lyric poetry from the Archaic period onward.C. M. Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry: From Alcman to Simonides pp. 108, 191, 264; Patricia A. Rosenmeyer, The Poetics of Imitation: Anacreon and the Anacreontic Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 1992), [https://books.google.com/books?id=rIqsUZyYMQAC&q=roses passim.] In Latin literature, to be "in the roses and violets" meant experiencing carefree pleasure.Henriksén, A Commentary on Martial, p. 59, citing Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.73. Floral wreaths and garlands "mark the wearers as celebrants and likely serve as an expression of the beauty and brevity of life itself."Karen K. Hersch, The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 91. Roses and violets were the most popular flowers at Rome for wreaths, which were sometimes given as gifts.Henriksén, A Commentary on Martial, p. 256, citing Martial 9.60; Pliny, Natural History 21.14; Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.410; Statius, Silvae 1.2.22. Ludwig Friedländer, Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire, translated by A.B. Gough (Routledge,1913), vol. 4, pp. 144–145, notes that Roman violae may at times refer to the wallflower or stock as well as violets.

Flowers were associated with or offered to some deities, particularly the goddesses Aphrodite (Roman Venus), PersephoneMonica S. Cyrino, Aphrodite (Routledge, 2010), p. 36; Corinth. The Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore: Terracotta Figurines of the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods (ASCSA, 2000), vol. 18, pt. 4, pp. 124–125. (Proserpina), and ChlorisAda Cohen, "Mythic Landscapes of Greece," in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology (Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 316. (Flora). Roses and fragrances are a special attribute of Aphrodite,Cyrino, Aphrodite, pp. 35–39; Ian Du Quesnay, "Three Problems in Poem 66," in Catullus: Poems, Books, Reader (Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 165–166. and also of Dionysus, particularly in Imperial-era poetry as a wine god for drinking parties or with the presence of Eros ("Love, Desire").M.L. West, "The Anacreontea," in Hellenica: Selected Papers on Greek Literature and Thought. Volume II: Lyric and Drama (Oxford University Press, 2013), vol. 2, pp. 388–389; Laura Miguélez-Cavero, Poems in Context: Greek Poetry in the Egyptian Thebaid 200–600 AD (Walter de Gruyter, 2008), pp. 130–134 (on the wine of Dionysus as having a potent fragrance that competes with that of flowers such as roses); Xavier Riu, Dionysism and Comedy (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), p. 108; Edoarda Barra-Salzédo, En soufflant la grâce: Âmes, souffles et humeurs en Grèce ancienne (Jérôme Villon, 2007), p. 178. The Greek romance novel Daphnis and Chloe (2nd century AD) describes a pleasure garden, with roses and violets among its abundant flora, centered on a sacred space for Dionysus.A.R. Littlewood, "Ancient Literary Evidence for the Pleasure Gardens of Roman Country Villas," in Ancient Roman villa Gardens, Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture 10 (Dumbarton Oaks, 1987), p. 28. At Rome Venus was a goddess of gardens as well as love and beauty.Michael Lipka, Roman Gods: A Conceptual Approach (Brill, 2009), p. 42. Venus received roses at her ritual cleansing (lavatio) on April 1 and at the wine festival (Vinalia) celebrated in her honor April 23.Ovid, Fasti 4.138 and 869f.; Hooey, "Rosaliae signorum," p. 27.

A lavish display of flowers was an expression of conviviality and liberal generosity. An Imperial-era business letter surviving on papyrus attempts to soothe a bridegroom's mother upset that the rose harvest was insufficient to fill her order for the wedding; the suppliers compensated by sending 4,000 narcissus instead of the 2,000 she requested.Oxyrhynchus Papyri 331.1–21; The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, p. 30. While flowers were a part of Roman weddings, the bridegroom was more likely than the bride to wear a flower crown; Statius (1st century AD) describes a groom as wearing a wreath of roses, violets, and lilies.Statius, Silvae 1.20; Hersch, The Roman Wedding, p. 90. When the emperor made a formal arrival (adventus) at a city, garlands of flowers might be among the gestures of greeting from the welcome delegation."Triumph," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, p. 123. According to an account in the Historia Augusta ("presumably fictional"), the decadent emperor Heliogabalus buried the guests at one of his banquets in an avalanche of rose petals.The Classical Tradition, edited by Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, Salvatore Settis (Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 524. In Greek culture, the phyllobolia was the showering of a victorious athlete or bridal couple with leaves or flower petals.Stephen G. Miller, The Berkeley Plato (University of California Press, 2009), p. 43; Bruno Currie, Pindar and the Cult of Heroes (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 141; John H. Oakley and Rebecca H. Sinos, The Wedding in Ancient Athens (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), p. 27.

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Classical mythology preserves a number of stories in which blood and flowers are linked in divine metamorphosis.Miller, The Corporeal Imagination, p. 74. When Adonis, beloved of Aphrodite, was killed by a boar during a hunt, his blood produced a flower. A central myth of the Roman rites of Cybele is the self-castration of her consort Attis, from whose blood a violet-colored flower sprang. In the Gnostic text On the Origin of the World, possibly dating to the early 4th century,Hans-Gebhard Bethge, Bentley Layton, Societas Coptica Hierosolymitana, "On the Origin of the World (II,5 and XIII,2)," in The Nag Hammadi Library in English: The Definitive New Translation of the Gnostic Scriptures Complete in One Volume (Brill, 1977, rev. ed. 1996), p. 170. the rose was the first flower to come into being, created from the virgin blood of Psyche ("Soul") after she united sexually with Eros.The examples of Attis, Adonis, On the Origin of the World from Miller, The Corporeal Imagination, p. 74. In the 4th-century poem Cupid Crucified by the Gallo-Roman poet Ausonius, the god Cupid (the Roman equivalent of Eros) is tortured in the underworld by goddesses disappointed in love, and the blood from his wounds causes roses to grow.Miller, The Corporeal Imagination, p. 75.

In Egyptian religion, funerary wreaths of laurel, palm, feathers, papyrus, or precious metals represented the "crown of justification" that the deceased was to receive when he was judged in the Weighing of the Heart ceremony of the afterlife. In the Imperial period, the wreath might be roses, under the influence of the Romanized cult of Isis.Lorelei H. Corcoran and Marie Svoboda, Herakleides: A Portrait Mummy from Roman Egypt (Getty Publications, 2010), p. 32. The statue of Isis was adorned with roses following the Navigium Isidis, an Imperial holiday March 5 when a ceremonial procession represented the "sailing" of Isis.Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.6.1; Miller, The Corporeal Imagination, p. 74. In the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, the protagonist Lucius is transformed into an ass, and after a journey of redemption returns to human form by eating roses and becoming an initiate into the mysteries of Isis. A festival called the Rhodophoria, preserved in three Greek papyri, is the "rose-bearing" probably for Isis, or may be the Greek name for the Rosalia.J. Gwyn Griffiths, Apuleius of Madaurus: The Isis-Book: (Metamorphoses, Book XI) (Brill, 1975), pp 160–161.

File:Fresco Fragment with Four Cupids Hanging Garlands - Google Art Project.jpg, in a wall painting from Pompeii: the Psyche on the right holds a libation bowl, a symbol of religious piety often depicted as a rosetteRabun Taylor, "Roman Oscilla: An Assessment," RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 48 (2005), p. 92.]]

Roses had funerary significance in Greece, but were particularly associated with death and entombment among the Romans.Frederick E. Brenk, Clothed in Purple Light: Studies in Vergil and in Latin Literature (Franz Steiner, 1999), pp. 87, 102. In Greece, roses appear on funerary steles, and in epitaphs most often of girls.Brenk, Clothed in Purple Light p. 87. In Imperial-era Greek epitaphs, the death of an unmarried girl is compared to a budding rose cut down in spring; a young woman buried in her wedding clothes is "like a rose in a garden"; an eight-year-old boy is like the rose that is "the beautiful flower of the Erotes" ("Loves" or Cupids).Brenk, Clothed in Purple Light, p. 87, note 2. As a symbol of both blooming youth and mourning, the rose often marks a death experienced as untimely or premature.Brenk, Clothed in Purple Light, p. 88. In the Iliad, Aphrodite anoints Hector's corpse with "ambrosial oil of roses"As translated by Robert Fagles. to maintain the integrity of his body against abuse in death.Iliad 23.185–187; Cyrino, Aphrodite, pp. 63, 94. Wooden cult statues might be anointed periodically with rose oil as a preservative, according to Pausanias (9.41.7): Barbara Breitenberger, Aphrodite and Eros: The Development of Greek Erotic Mythology (Routledge, 2007), p. 60. In Greek and Latin poetry, roses grow in the blessed afterlife of the Elysian Fields.Brenk, Clothed in Purple Light, pp. 102–104, 113, citing Pindar, frg. 129 (edition of Snell); Propertius 4.7.59–62.

Bloodless sacrifice to the dead could include rose garlands and violets as well as libations of wine,Hersch, The Roman Wedding, p. 91, citing Ovid. and Latin purpureus expressed the red-to-purple color range of roses and violets particularly as flowers of death. In ancient etymology, purpureus was thought related to Greek porphyreos in the sense of suffusing the skin with purple blood in bruising or wounding. The Augustan epic poet Vergil uses the metaphor of a purple flower to describe the premature, bloody deaths of young men in battle:Vergil, Aeneid 6.884 and 9.434–437; Brenk, Clothed in Purple Light, pp. 89–90, 112–113. The death of Pallas evokes both the violet of Attis and the hyacinth generated from the dying blood of Apollo's beloved Hyacinthus.J.D. Reed, Virgil's Gaze: Nation and Poetry in the Aeneid (Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 22. Claudian writes of the "bloody splendor" of roses in the meadow from which Proserpina will be abducted to the underworld, with hyacinths and violets contributing to the lush flora.Claudian, De rapto Proserpina 2.92–93: sanguineo splendore rosas. Roses and the ominous presence of thorns may intimate bloodshed and mortality even in the discourse of love.Rosenmeyer, The Poetics of Imitation, pp. 211–212.

File:Maenad and Cupid MAN Napoli Inv110591.jpg (attendant of Dionysus) holds Cupid as he extends a rose, in a wall painting from the House of Lucius Caecilius Iucundus, Pompeii]]

Conversely, roses in a funerary context can allude to festive banqueting, since Roman families met at burial sites on several occasions throughout the year for libations and a shared meal that celebrated both the cherished memory of the beloved dead and the continuity of life through the family line.J.M.C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971, 1996), pp. 62–63; Regina Gee, "From Corpse to Ancestor: The Role of Tombside Dining in the Transformation of the Body in Ancient Rome," in The Materiality of Death: Bodies, Burials, Beliefs, Bar International Series 1768 (Oxford, 2008), pp. 59–68. In Roman tomb painting, red roses often spill bountifully onto light ground. These ageless flowers created a perpetual Rosalia and are an expression of Roman beliefs in the soul's continued existence.Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World, p. 63.

The bones or ashes of the deceased may be imagined as generating flowers, as in one Latin epitaph that reads:

Here lies Optatus, a child ennobled by devotion: I pray that his ashes may be violets and roses, and I ask that the Earth, who is his mother now, be light upon him, for the boy's life was a burden to no one.Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World, p. 37.

Roses were planted at some tombs and mausoleums, and adjacent grounds might be cultivated as gardens to grow roses for adornment or even produce to sell for cemetery upkeep or administrative costs.Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World, pp. 97–98; Claire Holleran, Shopping in Ancient Rome: The Retail Trade in the Late Republic and the Principate (Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 119; John S. Kloppenborg and Richard S. Ascough, Greco-Roman Associations: Texts, Translations, and Commentary. I: Attica, Central Greece, Macedonia, Thrace (Walter de Gruyter, 2011), vol. 1, p. 327 (in regard to bequests made to associations, who might use surplus profit to benefit the membership). In the 19th to the 21st centuries, a profusion of cut and cultivated flowers was still a characteristic of Italian cemeteries to a degree that distinguished them from Anglo-American practice.Jack Goody and Cesare Poppi, "Flowers and Bones: Approaches to the Dead in Anglo-American and Italian Cemeteries," in Modes of Comparison: Theory and Practice (University of Michigan Press, 2006), pp. 420–456; the epitaph of Optatus provides an epigraph for the article. See p. 451, note 60, on the possible connection of the Rosalia to the Romanian festival of Rusalii at Whitsuntide, with a citation of Gail Kligman, Căluş: Symbolic Transformation in Romanian Ritual (University of Chicago Press, 1981), and see also Beza, Paganism in Romanian Folklore, pp. 42–43. This difference is one of the Roman Catholic practices criticized by some Protestants, especially in the 19th century, as too "pagan" in origin.Goody and Poppi, "Flowers and Bones," p. 442.

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Although the rose had a long tradition in funerary art,Carole E. Newlands, Statius. Silvae Book II (Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 94. the earliest record of a Roman rose festival named as such dates to the reign of Domitian (81–96 AD),CIL 10.444. and places the observance on June 20.Robert E.A. Palmer, "Silvanus, Sylvester, and the Chair of St. Peter," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 122.4 (1978), p. 226. The inscription was made by a priestly association (collegium) in Lucania devoted to the woodland god Silvanus. It records vows for the wellbeing of the emperor and prescribes a sacrifice to Silvanus on five occasions in the year, among them the Rosalia. Although Silvanus is typically regarded as a deity of the woods and the wild, Vergil describes him as bearing flowering fennel and lilies.Vergil, Eclogue 10.25. In other inscriptions, three donors to Silvanus had adopted the cultic name Anthus (Greek anthos, "flower") and a fourth, of less certain reading, may have the Latin name Florus, the masculine form of Flora.Palmer, "Silvanus, Sylvester, and the Chair of St. Peter," p. 226. Since trees are the form of plant life most often emblematic of Silvanus, his connection with flowers is obscure. His female counterparts the Silvanae, primarily found in the Danubian provinces, are sometimes depicted carrying flower pots or wreaths.Peter F. Dorcey, The Cult of Silvanus: A Study in Roman Folk Religion (Brill, 1992), p. 44. Through his epithet Dendrophorus, "Tree-bearer," he was linked to the Romanized cult of Attis and Cybele in which celebrants called dendrophori participated.Dorcey, The Cult of Silvanus, pp. 17, 19, 31, 82.

When well-to-do people wrote a will and made end-of-life preparations, they might set aside funds for the maintenance of their memory and care (cura) after death, including rose-adornment. One epitaph records a man's provision for four annual observances in his honor: on the Parentalia, an official festival for honoring the dead February 13; his birthday (dies natalis); and a Rosaria and Violaria.ILS 8366; Regina Gee, "From Corpse to Ancestor: The Role of Tombside Dining in the Transformation of the Body in Ancient Rome," in The Materiality of Death: Bodies, Burials, Beliefs, Bar International Series 1768 (Oxford, 2008), p. 64. Guilds and associations (collegia) often provided funeral benefits for members, and some were formed specifically for that purpose. Benefactors might fund communal meals and rose-days at which members of the college honored the dead.John F. Donahue, The Roman Community at Table During the Principate (University of Michigan Press, 2004), p. 132. The College of Aesculapius and Hygia at Rome celebrated a Violet Day on March 22 and a Rose Day May 11, and these flower festivals are frequent among the occasions observed by dining clubs and burial societies.Donahue, The Roman Community at Table, pp. 129–133.

Most evidence for the Rosalia comes from Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy), where twenty-four Latin inscriptions referring to it have been found. Ten Latin inscriptions come from the Italian peninsula, three from Macedonia, and four from Thrace, Illyria, and Pannonia. Six Greek inscriptions come from Bithynia, three from Macedonia, and one each from Bulgaria, Scythia, Mysia, Phrygia, Lydia, Asia and Arcadia.Kokkinia, "Rosen für die Toten," p. 209.

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At Pergamon, Rosalia seems to have been a three-day festival May 24–26, beginning with an "Augustan day" (dies Augusti, a day of Imperial cult marking a birthday, marriage, or other anniversary of the emperor or his family).Steven J. Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the Ruins (Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 129. The three-day Rosalia was among the occasions observed by a group of hymnodes, a male choir organized for celebrating Imperial cult, as recorded in a Greek inscription on an early 2nd-century altar. The eukosmos, the officer of "good order" who presided over the group for a year, was to provide one mina (a monetary unit) and one loaf for celebrating the Rosalia on the Augustan day, which was the first day of the month called Panemos on the local calendar.Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John, p. 108. The identification of Panemos with a modern month name varies throughout the ancient calendars on which it appears; see Alan E. Samuel, Greek and Roman Chronology: Calendars and Years in Classical Antiquity (C.H. Beck, 1972). On the second of Panemos, the group's priest provided wine, a table setting, one mina, and three loaves for the Rosalia. The grammateus, a secretary or administrator, was responsible for a mina, a table setting worth one denarius, and one loaf for the third day of Rosalia.Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John, p. 112. The group seems to have functioned like a collegium at Rome, and as a burial society for members.Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John, p. 111.

Inscriptions from Acmonia, in Phrygia, show the Rosalia in the context of the religious pluralism of the Roman Empire. In 95 AD, a bequest was made for a burial society to ensure the annual commemoration of an individual named Titus Praxias. In addition to a graveside communal meal and cash gifts to members, 12 denarii were to be allocated for adorning the tomb with roses. The obligations of membership were both legally and religiously binding: the society had its own tutelary deities who were invoked to oversee and ensure the carrying out of the deceased's wishes. These were Theos Sebastos (= Divus Augustus in Latin), Zeus under the local and unique epithet Stodmenos, Asclepius the Savior (Roman Aesculapius, as in the collegium above), and Artemis of Ephesus.Paul Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor (Cambridge University Press, 1991, 1994 reprint), p. 81; Barbara Levick, The Government of the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 2000, 2nd ed.), pp. 209–210 (with a date of 85, presumably a typographical error since the date is noted as the eleventh consulship of Domitian). On Stodmenos, see Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, edited by Richard J. A Talbert (Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 971. Acmonia also had a significant Greek-speaking Jewish community, and an inscription dating from the period 215–295 records similar arrangements made for a Jewish woman by her husband. It provides for an annual rose-adornment of the tomb by a legally constituted neighborhood or community association, with the solemn injunction "and if they do not deck it with roses each year, they will have to reckon with the justice of God."Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor, pp. 78–81. The formula "he will have to reckon with God" was used only among Jews and Christians in Phrygia, and there is a slighter possibility that the inscription might be Christian.Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor, p. 79. The inscription deals with legal titles to property, and unlike Christians at this time, Jews held full rights as Roman citizens to own property. The inscription is among the evidence that Judaism was not isolated from the general religious environment of the Imperial world, since a rosatio could be made without accompanying sacrifices at the tomb. Instead of multiple deities, the Jewish husband honoring his wife invoked the divine justice of his own God, and chose to participate in the customs of the community while adapting them in ways "acceptable to his Jewish faith".Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor, pp. 80–81. Some Jewish wedding practices, including the wearing of rose crowns by the bridegroom or bride, were also compatible with or assimilated from Imperial society in general; Michael L. Satlow, "Slipping toward Sacrament: Jews, Christians, and Marriage," in Jewish Culture and Society under the Christian Roman Empire (Peeters, 2002), p. 74.

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In Imperial-era Macedonia, several inscriptions mention the Rosalia as a commemorative festival funded by bequests to groups such as a vicianus, a village or neighborhood association (from vicus); thiasos, a legally constituted association, often having a religious character; or symposium, in this sense a drinking and social club. In Thessalonica, a priestess of a thiasos bequeathed a tract of grapevines to pay for rose wreaths.Inscriptiones Graecae X/2 260; Richard S. Ascough, "Paul's 'Apocolypticism' and the Jesus Associations at Thessalonica and Corinth," in Redescribing Paul and the Corinthians (Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), p. 164. If the Dionysian thiasos disbanded or failed in its duties, the property was to pass to a society of Dryophoroi ("Oak-Bearers"), or finally to the state.Kloppenborg and Ascough, Greco-Roman Associations, p. 373. In addition to associations of initiates into the mysteries of Dionysus, inscriptions in Macedonia and Thrace record bequests for rose-adornment to thiasoi of Diana (Artemis) and of the little-attested Thracian god or hero Sourogethes, and to a gravediggers' guild.Kloppenborg and Ascough, Greco-Roman Associations, p. 325. The gravediggers were to kindle a tombside fire each year for the Rosalia, and other contexts suggest that the wreaths themselves might be burnt as offerings.Kloppenborg and Ascough, Greco-Roman Associations, pp. 372–374. A distinctive collocation that occurs a few times in Macedonian commemoration is an inscription prescribing the Rosalia accompanied by a relief of the Thracian Horseman.Kloppenborg and Ascough, Greco-Roman Associations, pp. 327–329.

Some scholars think that customs of the Rosalia were assimilated into Bacchic festivals of the dead by the Roman military, particularly in Macedonia and Thrace.Hendrik Wagenvoort, "The Journey of the Souls of the Dead to the Isles of the Blessed," Mnemosyne 24.2 (1971), p. 124; Martin P. Nilsson, "The Bacchic Mysteries of the Roman Age," Harvard Theological Review 46.4 (1953), p. 187. A Greek inscription of 138 AD records a donation for rose-adornment (rhodismos) to the council in Histria, in modern Dobruja, an area settled by the Thracian Bessi, who were especially devoted to Dionysus.Beza, Paganism in Romanian Folklore, p. 43. Macedonia was famed for its roses, but nearly all evidence for the Rosalia as such dates to the Roman period.Kloppenborg and Ascough, Greco-Roman Associations, pp. 327–329.

{{More|Anthesteria}}

Although ivy and grapevines are the regular vegetative attributes of Dionysus, at Athens roses and violets could be adornments for Dionysian feasts. In a fragment from a dithyramb praising Dionysus, the poet Pindar (5th century BC) sets a floral scene generated by the opening up of the Seasons (Horae), a time when Semele, the mortal mother of Dionysus, is to be honored:

File:John William Waterhouse Ariadne.jpg John William Waterhouse: the sleeping red-gowned Ariadne is surrounded by roses, with the sailing background implying both the departure of Theseus and the advent of Dionysus, foreshadowed by his leopardsKarl Kilinski II, Greek Myth and Western Art: The Presence of the Past (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 106.]]

... as the chamber of the purple-robed Horai is opened,
the nectar-bearing flowers bring in the sweet-smelling spring.
Then, then, upon the immortal earth are cast
the lovely tresses of violets, and roses fitted to hair
and voices of songs echo to the accompaniment of pipes
and choruses come to Semele of the circling headband.Pindar, frg. 75 SnM, as translated for the Loeb Classical Library (1997) by William H. Race and cited in this context by Riu, Dionysism and Comedy, p. 108, note 58, and Walter Friedrich Otto, Dionysus: Myth and Cult, translated by Robert B. Palmer (Indiana University Press, 1965, originally published 1960 in German), p. 159.

Dionysus was an equalizing figure of the democratic polis whose band of initiates (thiasos) provided a model for civic organizations.Richard Seaford, Cosmology and the Polis: The Social Construction of Space and Time in the Tragedies of Aeschylus (Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 101–102. A form of Dionysia dating to pre-democratic Athens was the Anthesteria, a festival name some scholars derive from Greek anthos, "flower, blossom",D. Felton, "The Dead," in A Companion to Greek Religion (Blackwell, 2010), p. 89; Jennifer Neils, "Children and Greek Religion," in Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past (Yale University Press, 2003), p. 145; Carl Kerenyi, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life (Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 300. as did the Greeks themselves, connecting it to the blossoming grapevine.Walter Burkert, Homo Necans p. 214. In the 6th century AD, the Byzantine antiquarian Joannes Lydus related the festival name to Anthousa, which he said was the Greek equivalent of the Latin Flora.Lydus, De mensibus 4.73; Clifford Ando, "The Palladium and the Pentateuch: Towards a Sacred Topography of the Later Roman Empire," Phoenix 55 (2001), p. 400. The three-day festival, which took place at the threshold between winter and spring, involved themes of liminality and "opening up", but despite its importance in early Athens, many aspects elude certainty. It was primarily a celebration of opening the new wine from the previous fall's vintage.Noel Robertson, "Athens' Festival of the New Wine," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 95 (1993), p. 197ff. Robertson argues that the Anthesteria was not a festival of the dead, and believes those elements have been attributed to it erroneously. On the first day, "Dionysus" entered borne by a wheeled "ship" in a public procession, and was taken to the private chamber of the king's wifeThe word for "king" is basileus, an indication that the ceremony evokes a time before Athens was a democracy; Seaford, Cosmology and the Polis, pp. 87–88. for a ritual union with her; the precise ceremonies are unknown, but may be related to the myth of Ariadne, who became the consort of Dionysus after she was abandoned by the Athenian culture hero Theseus.Seaford, Cosmology and the Polis, pp. 85–87, 101, 133, citing Apollodorus, Against Nature 73; Burkert, Greek Religion pp. 109, 164, 239.

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In keeping with its theme of new growth and transformation,Neils, "Children and Greek Religion," in Coming of Age in Ancient Greece, p. 145. the Anthesteria was also the occasion for a rite of passage from infancy to childhood—a celebratory moment given the high rate of infant mortality in the ancient world. Children between the age of three and four received a small jug (chous) specially decorated with scenes of children playing at adult activities. The chous itself is sometimes depicted on the vessel, adorned with a wreath. The following year, the child was given a ceremonial taste of wine from his chous.Neils, "Children and Greek Religion," p. 145; John H. Oakley, "Death and the Child," p. 177; Lesley A. Beaumont, "The Changing Face of Childhood," p. 75; and H.A. Shapiro, "Fathers and Sons, Men and Boys," pp. 89, 103, all in Coming of Age in Ancient Greece. See also Burkert, Greek Religion, pp. 237–238. These vessels are often found in children's graves, accompanying them to the underworld after a premature death.Beaumont, "The Changing Face of Childhood," p. 75; Oakley, "Death and the Child," p. 177.

The Anthesteria has also been compared with the Roman Lemuria,Burkert, Homo Necans, p. 226. with the second day a vulnerable time when the barrier between the world of the living and the dead became permeable, and the shades of the dead could wander the earth. On the third day, the ghosts were driven from the city, and Hermes Chthonios ("Underworld Hermes") received sacrifices in the form of pots of grains and seeds.Burkert, Greek Religion, pp. 218, 222. Although the identity of the shades is unclear, typically the restless dead are those who died prematurely.Kerenyi, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, p. 364.

The priestess of Thessalonica who bequeathed a tract of vineyard for the maintenance of her memory required each Dionysian initiate who attended to wear a rose wreath. In a Dionysian context, wine, roses, and the color red are trappings of violence and funerals as well as amorous pursuits and revelry. Dionysus is described by Philostratus (d. ca. 250 AD) as wearing a wreath of roses and a red or purple cloak as he encounters Ariadne,Philostratus, Imagines 1.15; Terence Cave, Retrospectives: Essays in Literature, Poetics and Cultural History (Modern Humanities Research Association, 2009), p. 73. whose sleep is a kind of death from which she is awakened and transformed by the god's love.Susan Guettel Cole, "Finding Dionysus," in A Companion to Greek Religion p. 333; Nina da Vinci Nichols, Ariadne's Lives (Associated University Presses, 1995), p. 14 et passim; Zahra Newby, "In the Guise of Gods and Heroes: Portrait Heads on Roman Mythological Sarcophagi," in Life, Death and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi (Walter de Gruyter, 2011), pp. 201–205.

File:Mosaïque - Buste de Dionysos - Palazzo Massimo.JPG]]

The crown that symbolized Ariadne's immortal union with Dionysus underwent metamorphosis into a constellation, the Corona Borealis; in some sources, the corona was a diadem of jewels, but for the Roman dramatist SenecaSeneca, Phaedra 769, as noted by Michael Coffey and Roland Mayer, Seneca: Phaedra (Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 159–160; and Hercules Furens 18, as noted by John G. Fitch, Seneca's Hercules Furens: A Critical Text with Introduction and Commentary (Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 125–126. and others it was a garland of roses. In the Astronomica of Manilius (1st century AD), Ariadne's crown is bejeweled with purple and red flowers—violets, hyacinths, poppies, and "the flower of the blooming rose, made red by blood"—and exerts a positive astrological influence on cultivating flower gardens, weaving garlands, and distilling perfume.Manilius, Astronomica 251–269 (edition of Houseman), as noted by Michael Murrin, "Renaissance Allegory from Petrarch to Spenser," in The Cambridge Companion to Allegory (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 172, with reference to the influence of the passage on Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene 6.10.14.

Dionysian scenes were common on Roman sarcophagi, and the persistence of love in the face of death may be embodied by attendant Cupids or Erotes.Janet Huskinson, Roman Children's Sarcophagi: Their Decoration and Its Social Significance (Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 30; Paul Zanker and Björn C. Ewald, Living with Myths: The Imagery of Roman Sarcophagi (Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 102 et passim; Newby, "In the Guise of Gods and Heroes," pp. 201–205. In Vergil's Aeneid, purple flowers are strewn with the pouring of Bacchic libations during the funeral rites the hero Aeneas conducts for his dead father.Vergil, Aeneid 5.77–81; Brenk, Clothed in Purple Light, p. 88. In the Dionysiaca of Nonnus (late 4th–early 5th century AD), Dionysus mourns the death of the beautiful youth Ampelos by covering the body with flowers—roses, lilies, anemones—and infusing it with ambrosia. The dead boy's metamorphosis creates the first grapevine, which in turn produces the transformative substance of wine for human use.Nonnus, Dionysiaca 11.241–243; Miguélez-Cavero, Poems in Context, p. 132.

File:Hendrik Goltzius - Stervende Adonis.jpg]]

The rites of Adonis (Adoneia) also came to be regarded as a Rosalia in the Imperial era.Dominic Perring, "'Gnosticism' in Fourth-Century Britain: The Frampton Mosaics Reconsidered," Britannia 34 (2003), p. 108. In one version of the myth, blood from Aphrodite's foot, pricked by a thorn, dyes the flowers produced from the body of Adonis when he is killed by the boar.Rina Talgam, "The Ekphrasis Eikonos of Procopius of Gaza: The Depiction of Mythological Themes in Palestine and Arabia during the Fifth and Sixth Centuries," in Christian Gaza in Late Antiquity (Brill, 2004), pp. 223–224. In the Lament for Adonis attributed to Bion (2nd century BC), the tears of Aphrodite match the blood shed by Adonis drop by drop,

and the blood and tears become flowers upon the ground. Of the blood comes the rose, and of the tears the windflower.Brenk, Clothed in Purple Light, p. 87; translation by J.M. Edmonds at [http://www.theoi.com/Text/Bion.html theoi.com.] Pausanias (6.24.7) also connects roses to the story of Aphrodite and Adonis; Cyprino, Aphrodite, p. 96.

According to myth, Adonis was born from the incestuous union of Myrrha and her father. The delusional lust was a punishment from Aphrodite, whom Myrrha had slighted. The girl deceived her father with darkness and a disguise, but when he learned who she really was, his rage transformed her human identity and she became the fragrance-producing myrrh tree. The vegetative nature of Adonis is expressed in his birth from the tree. In one tradition, Aphrodite took the infant, hid him in a box (larnax, a word often referring to chests for ash or other human remains), and gave him to the underworld goddess Persephone to nurture. When he grew into a beautiful youth, both Aphrodite and Persephone—representing the realms of love and death—claimed him. Zeus decreed that Adonis would spend a third of the year with the heavenly Aphrodite, a third with chthonic Persephone, and a third on the mortal plane. The theme is similar to Persephone's own year divided between her underworld husband and the world above.Gina Salapata, "Τριφίλητος Ἄδωνις: An Exceptional Pair of Terra-cotta Arulae from South Italy," in Studia Varia from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Getty Publications, 2001), vol. 2, p. 34; J.P. Massaut, "Mystique rhénane et humanisme chrétien d'Eckhart à Érasme. Continuité, convergence ou rupture?" in The Late Middle Ages and the Dawn of Humanism Outside Italy (Leuven University Press, 1972), p. 128, citing as an example Ausonius, Epistolarum liber 4.49.

For J.G. Frazer, Adonis was an archetypal vegetative god, and H.J. Rose saw in the rites of Adonis "the outlines of an Oriental myth of the Great Mother and of her lover who dies as the vegetation dies, but comes back to life again."H.J. Rose, A Handbook to Greek Mythology (Routledge, 1928, 6th ed. 1958, 1964 paperback edition), p. 101. Robert A. Segal analyzed the death of Adonis as the failure of the "eternal child" (puer) to complete his rite of passage into the adult life of the city-state, and thus as a cautionary tale involving the social violations of "incest, murder, license, possessiveness, celibacy, and childlessness".Robert A. Segal, "Adonis: A Greek Eternal Child," in Myth and the Polis (Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 64–85.

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Women performed the Adoneia with ceremonial lamentation and dirges, sometimes in the presence of an effigy of the dead youth that might be placed on a couch, perfumed, and adorned with greenery.Salapata, "Τριφίλητος Ἄδωνις," p. 35. As part of the festival, they planted "gardens of Adonis", container-grown annuals from "seeds planted in shallow soil, which sprang up quickly and withered quickly",Rose, A Handbook to Greek Mythology, p. 101. compressing the cycle of life and death. The festival, often nocturnal, was not a part of the official state calendar of holidays, and as a private rite seems like the Rosalia to have had no fixed date.Salapata, "Τριφίλητος Ἄδωνις," p. 34. Although the celebration varied from place to place, it generally had two phases: joyful revelry like a marriage feast in celebration of the love between Aphrodite and Adonis, and ritual mourning for his death. Decorations and ritual trappings for the feast, including the dish gardens, were transformed for the funeral or destroyed as offerings: the garlanded couch became the lying-in bier (prothesis).Salapata, "Τριφίλητος Ἄδωνις," pp. 35–36.

The iconography of Aphrodite and Adonis as a couple is often hard to distinguish in Greek art from that of Dionysus and Ariadne.Salapata, "Τριφίλητος Ἄδωνις," p. 36. In contrast to Greek depictions of the couple enjoying the luxury and delight of love, Roman paintings and sarcophagi almost always frame their love at the moment of loss, with the death of Adonis in Aphrodite's arms posing the question of resurrection.Salapata, "Τριφίλητος Ἄδωνις," pp. 38 and 48 (note 138). At Madaba, an Imperial city of the Province of Arabia in present-day Jordan, a series of mythological mosaics has a scene of Aphrodite and Adonis enthroned, attended by six Erotes and three Charites ("Graces"). A basket of overturned roses near them has been seen as referring to the Rosalia.Talgam, "The Ekphrasis Eikonos of Procopius," p. 223.

In late antiquity, literary works set at a Rosalia—whether intended for performance at the actual occasion, or only using the occasion as a fictional setting—take the "lament for Adonis" as their theme.Talgam, "The Ekphrasis Eikonos of Procopius," p. 223; David Westberg, "The Rite of Spring: Erotic Celebration in the Dialexis and Ethiopoiiai of Procopius of Gaza," in Plotting With Eros: Essays on the Poetics of Love and the Erotics of Reading (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2009), p. 189. Shared language for the Roman festival of Rosalia and the floral aspects of the Adoneia may indicate similar or comparable practices, and not necessarily direct assimilation.Westberg, "The Rite of Spring," in Plotting with Eros, p. 189.

File:Statue of a reclining Attis at the Shrine of Attis 1.jpg, holding a shepherd's crook (damaged) in his left hand and in his right pomegranates, pine cones, and wheat: his partial nudity shows that he has undergone complete castration, and the bearded head on which he leans is most likely the river god SangariusMaria Grazia Lancellotti, Attis, Between Myth and History: King, Priest, and God (Brill, 2002), p.116. or GallusJaime Alvar, Romanising Oriental Gods: Myth, Salvation and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis and Mithras, translated by Richard Gordon (Brill, 2008), p. 38. (from Ostia, 2nd century AD)]]

From the reign of Claudius to that of Antoninus Pius, a "holy week" in March developed for ceremonies of the Magna Mater ("Great Mother", also known as Mater Deum, "Mother of the Gods," or Cybele) and Attis.Lancellotti, Attis, p. 81; Bertrand Lançon, Rome in Late Antiquity (Routledge, 2001), p. 91; Philippe Borgeaud, Mother of the Gods: From Cybele to the Virgin Mary, translated by Lysa Hochroth (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), pp. 51, 90, 123, 164. Scholars are divided as to whether the full program of observances was put in place under Claudius, or gradually expanded until the time of Antoninus Pius: Gary Forsythe, Time in Roman Religion: One Thousand Years of Religious History (Routledge, 2012), p. 88; Alvar, Romanising Oriental Gods, p. 286. A preliminary festival on March 15 marked the discovery by shepherds or Cybele of the infant Attis among the reeds of a Phrygian river. The continuous ceremonies recommenced March 22 with the Arbor intrat ("The Tree enters") and lasted through March 27 or 28. For the day of Arbor intrat, the college of dendrophores ("tree-bearers") carried a pine tree to which was bound an effigy of Attis, wrapped in "woollen bandages like a corpse" and ornamented with violet wreaths.Francisco R. Adrados, Festival, Comedy and Tragedy: The Greek Origins of Theatre, translated by Christopher Holme (Brill, 1975, originally published 1972 in Spanish), p. 395. Lucretius (1st century BC) mentions roses and other unnamed flowers in the ecstatic procession of the Magna Mater for the Megalensia in April.Lucretius, De rerum natura 2.627–628.; Hooey, "Rosaliae signorum," p. 27.

The most vivid and complex accountAlvar, Romanising Oriental Gods, p. 65; Gasparao, Soteriology, p. 41. of how the violet was created out of violence in the Attis myth is given by the Christian apologist Arnobius (d. ca. 330),Arnobius of Sicca, Adversus Nationes 6–7, drawing on sources he identifies as "Timotheus, a man not disreputable in matters of theology," and "Valerius the pontifex", possibly Marcus Valerius Messala, the consul of 53 BC and author of a treatise identifying Aion with Janus on the etymological basis of Ia, the name "Violet" in the story of Attis. Summary based on that of Lancelotti, Attis, pp. 3–5; Alvar, Romanising Oriental Gods, pp. 65–67; and Giulia Sfameni Gasparro (combining the versions of Arnobius and Pausanias), Soteriology and Mystic Aspects in the Cult of Cybele and Attis (Brill, 1985), pp. 38–41. whose version best reflects cult practice in the Roman Imperial period.Alvar, Romanising Oriental Gods, p. 64. The story begins with a rock in Phrygia named Agdus, from which had come the stones transformed to humans by Pyrrha and Deucalion to repopulate the world after the Flood. The Great Mother of the Gods customarily rested there, and there she was assailed by the lustful Jupiter. Unable to achieve his aim, the king of gods relieved himself by masturbating on the rock,Alvar, Romanising Oriental Gods, p. 65. from which was born Acdestis or Agdistis, a violent and supremely powerful hermaphroditic deity. After deliberations, the gods assign the cura of this audacity to Liber, the Roman god identified with Dionysus: cura means variously "care, concern, cure, oversight."

Liber sets a snare, replacing the waters of Agdistis's favorite spring (fons) with pure wine. Necessity in time drives the thirsty Agdistis to drink, veins sucking up the torpor-inducing liquid. The trap is sprung: a noose, woven from hair, suspends Agdistis by the genitals, and the struggle to break free causes a self-castration. From the blood springs a pomegranate tree, its fruit so enticing that Nana, the daughter of the river god Sangarius, in sinu reponit, a euphemism in Imperial-era medical and Christian writing for "placed within the vagina".J.N. Adams, entry on sinus (muliebris), The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 90–91. In Pausanias, the impregnating edible is an almond, with the almond tree playing a role later in the version of Arnobius; Gasparro, Soteriology, p. 38. Nana becomes pregnant, enraging her father. He locks her away as damaged goods, and starves her. She is kept alive by fruits and other vegetarian food provided by the Mother of the Gods. When the infant is born, Sangarius orders that it be exposed, but it is discovered and reared by a goatherd. This child is Attis.

File:Godward Ionian Dancing Girl 1902.jpg Dancing Girl (1902) by John William Godward, a companion to the same violet-wreathed figure in With Violets Wreathed and Robe of Saffron Hue, an example of classicizing myth in Victorian paintingVern G. Swanson, John William Godward: The Eclipse of Classicism (Antique Collectors Club Limited, 1997), p. 65; Rosemary J. Barrow, The Use of Classical Art and Literature by Victorian Painters, 1860–1912: Creating Continuity With the Traditions of High Art (Mellen Research University Press, 2007), p. 39.]]

The exceptionally beautiful Attis grows up favored by the Mother of the Gods and by Agdistis, who is his constant companion. Under the influence of wine, Attis reveals that his accomplishments as a hunter are owing to divine favor—an explanation for why wine is religiously prohibited (nefas) in his sanctuary and considered a pollution for those who would enter. Attis's relationship with Agdistis is characterized as infamis, disreputable and socially marginalizing. The Phrygian king Midas, wishing to redeem the boy (puer), arranges a marriage with his daughter, and locks down the city. The Mater Deum, however, know Attis's fate (fatum): that he will be preserved from harm only if he avoids the bonds of marriage. Both the Mother of the Gods and Agdistis crash the party, and Agdistis spreads frenzy and madness among the convivial guests. In a detail that appears only in a vexed passage in the Christian source,Gasparro, Soteriology, pp. 39–40, characterizing the detail as "a polemical emphasis". the daughter of a concubine to a man named Gallus cuts off her breasts. Raging like a bacchant, Attis then throws himself under a pine tree, and cuts off his genitals as an offering to Agdistis. He bleeds to death, and from the flux of blood is born a violet flower.

The Mother of the Gods wraps the genitals "in the garment of the dead" and covers them with earth, an aspect of the myth attested in ritual by inscriptions regarding the sacrificial treatment of animal scrota.Alvar, Romanising Oriental Gods, p. 275. The would-be bride, whose name is Violet (Greek Ia), covers Attis's chest with woollen bands, and after mourning with Agdistis kills herself. Her dying blood is changed into purple violets. The tears of the Mother of the Gods become an almond tree, which signifies the bitterness of death. She then takes the pine tree to her sacred cave, and Agdistis joins her in mourning, begging Jupiter to restore Attis to life. This he cannot permit; but fate allows the body to never decay, the hair to keep growing, and the little finger to live and to wave in perpetual motion.

Arnobius explicitly states that the rituals performed in honor of Attis in his day reenact aspects of the myth as he has told it, much of which developed only in the Imperial period, in particular the conflict and intersections with Dionysian cult.Lancellotti, Attis, pp. 89–90, 138ff. et passim; Jan N. Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible, and the Near East (Brill, 2008), pp. 294–296, 298. For the Arbor intrat on March 22, the dendrophores carried the violet-wreathed tree of Attis to the Temple of the Magna Mater. As a dies violae, the day of Arbor intrat recalled the scattering of violets onto graves for the Parentalia.Ovid, Fasti 2.537–540; Lancellotti, Attis, pp. 90–91; Gasparro, Soteriology, p. 42. Lancellotti emphasizes the non-cyclical permanence of Attis's death (p. 138) marked by rituals that recall funeral cult. The next day the dendrophores laid the tree to rest with noisy music that represented the Corybantes, youths who performed armed dances and in mythology served as guardians for infant gods.Michele Renee Salzman, On Roman Time: The Codex Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity (University of California Press, 1990), pp. 166–167. For the Dies Sanguinis ("Day of Blood") on March 24, the devotees lacerated themselves in a frenzy of mourning, spattering the effigy with the blood craved as "nourishment" by the dead. Some followers may have castrated themselves on this day, as a preliminary to becoming galli, the eunuch priests of Cybele. Attis was placed in his "tomb" for the Sacred Night that followed.Salzman, On Roman Time, p. 167; Lancellotti, Attis, pp. 82 and 90.

According to Sallustius, the cutting of the tree was accompanied by fasting, "as though we were cutting off the further progress of generation; after this we are fed on milk as though being reborn; that is followed by rejoicings and garlands and as it were a new ascent to the gods."Sallustius, Peri Theōn 4.10, as cited by Alvar, Romanising Oriental Gods, p. 277. The garlands and rejoicing (Hilaria) occurred on March 25, the vernal equinox on the Julian calendar, when Attis was in some sense "reborn" or renewed.Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.21.10; Forsythe, Time in Roman Religion, p. 88. Some early Christian sources associate this day with the resurrection of Jesus,Tertullian, Adversus Iudaeos 8; Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum 2.1; Forsythe, Time in Roman Religion, p. 88; Salzman, On Roman Time, p. 168. and Damascius saw it as a "liberation from Hades".Damascius, Vita Isidori excerpta a Photio Bibl. (Cod. 242), edition of R. Henry (Paris, 1971), p. 131; Salzman, On Roman Time, p. 168. After a day of rest (Requietio), the ritual cleansing (Lavatio) of the Magna Mater was carried out on March 27.Alvar, Romanising Oriental Gods, pp. 277, 286–287. The Lavatio is mentioned by Ovid in the Augustan period, and other literary references indicate it was "well established" by the Flavian period; Forsythe, Time in Roman Religion, p. 89. March 28 may have been a day of initiation into the mysteries of the Magna Mater and Attis at the Vaticanum.Specifically at the Gaianum, near the Phrygianum sanctuary associated with Cybele; Salzman, On Roman Time, pp. 165, 167. Lawrence Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 180, suggests that Initium Caiani might instead refer to the "entry of Gaius" (Caligula) into Rome on March 28, 37 AD, when he was acclaimed as princeps. The Gaianum was a track used by Caligula for chariot exercises. Salzman (p. 169) sees the Gaianum as a site alternative to the Phrygianum, access to which would have been obstructed in the 4th century by the construction of St. Peter's.

Although scholars have become less inclined to view Attis within the rigid schema of "dying and rising vegetation god", the vegetal cycle remains integral to the funerary nature of his rites.Gasparro, Soteriology, pp. 44–45; H.S. Versnel, Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion: Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual (Brill, 1993, 1994), vol. 2, p. 154. The pine tree and pine cones were introduced to the iconography of Attis for their cult significance during the Roman period.Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, pp. 279 and 288, suggesting also that the tree of the Romans was not entirely an innovation, but a survival or translation of the decorated tree, perhaps an almond, that was part of the Hittite new year festival in the spring. A late 1st- or 2nd-century statue of Attis from Athens has him with a basket containing pomegranates, pine cones, and a nosegay of violets.Gasparro, Soteriology, p. 48.

Perceived connections with older spring festivals that involved roses helped spread and popularize the Rosalia, and the private dies violae or violaris of the Romans was enhanced by the public prominence of Arbor intrat ceremonies.Hooey, "Rosaliae signorum," p. 27. The conceptual link between Attis and Adonis was developed primarily in the later Imperial period.Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, p. 270, emphasizing the disparities between the early cult of Attis and developments in Late Antiquity (p. 268). The Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry (d. ca. 305 AD) saw both Adonis and Attis as aspects of the "fruits of the earth":

File:The Awakening of Adonis - John William Waterhouse (1899).jpg]]

Attis is the symbol of the blossoms which appear early in the spring, and fall off before the complete fertilization; whence they further attributed castration to him, from the fruits not having attained to seminal perfection: but Adonis was the symbol of the cutting of the perfect fruits.As recorded by the Christian apologist Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica 3.11.12 and 15, and 3.13.14, translated by E.H. Gifford (1903), as cited by Gasparro, Soteriology, p. 46. In a commentary on Ovid, and citing Porphyry and Eusebius, the 15th-century Italian humanist Paulus Marsus noted that "Atys castrated means nothing other than the flower that falls before the fruit"; Rebecca Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance (University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 72.

Porphyry linked Attis, Adonis, Korē (Persephone as "the Maiden", influencing "dry" or grain crops), and Dionysus (who influences soft and shell fruits) as deities of "seminal law":

For Korē was carried off by Pluto, that is, the sun going down beneath the earth at seed-time; but Dionysus begins to sprout according to the conditions of the power which, while young, is hidden beneath the earth, yet produces fine fruits, and is an ally of the power in the blossom symbolized by Attis, and of the cutting of the ripened corn symbolized by Adonis.

Roses and violets are typically among the flower species that populate the meadow from which Persephone was abducted as Pluto's bride.Cohen, "Mythic Landscapes of Greece," in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology, p. 316, citing the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, one of the earliest treatments of the myth. Ovid places Proserpina among violets and lilies at Metamorphoses 5.332, and dwells on the abundance and variety of flowers—with the rose the favored choice of the attendant nymphs—in his treatment of the same myth for the month of April at Fasti 4.429–442. Claudian, De raptu Proserpina 2.92–93, lists roses, hyacinths and violets. The comparative mythologist Mircea Eliade saw divine metamorphosis as a "flowing of life" between vegetal and human existence. When violent death interrupts the creative potential of life, it is expressed "in some other form: plant, fruit, flower". Eliade related the violets of Attis and the roses and anemones of Adonis to legends of flowers appearing on battlefields after the deaths of heroes.Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, translated by Rosemary Sheed (University of Nebraska Press, 1996, translation originally published in 1958), p. 302.

File:5966 - Brescia - S. Giulia - Cippo per soldato (sec. I I) - Foto Giovanni Dall'Orto, 25 Giu 2011.jpg

The Roman army celebrated the Rosaliae signorum, when the military standards (signa) were adorned with roses in a supplication, on two dates in May. A.H. Hooey viewed the military rose festival as incorporating traditional spring festivals of vegetative deities.Hooey, "Rosaliae signorum," pp. 27–28. The festival is noted in the Feriale Duranum, a papyrus calendar for a cohort stationed at Dura-Europos during the reign of Severus Alexander (224–235 AD). The calendar is thought to represent a standard religious calendar issued to the military.Lucinda Dirven, The Palmyrenes of Dura-Europos: A Study of Religious Interaction in Roman Syria (Brill, 1999), pp. 184–185; Nigel Pollard, Soldiers, Cities, and Civilians in Roman Syria (University of Michigan Press, 2000), pp. 143 (especially note 126), 146. The day of the earlier of the two Rosaliae is uncertain because of the fragmentary text, but coincided with the period of the Lemuria, archaic festival days on May 9, 11, and 13Duncan Fishwick, "Dated Inscriptions and the Feriale Duranum," in Syria 65 (1988), p. 356; Douglas W. Geyer, Fear, Anomaly, and Uncertainty in the Gospel of Mark (Scarecrow Press, 2002), p. 138, citing R.O. Fink, A.S. Hooey, and W.S. Snyder, "The Feriale Duranum," Yale Classical Studies 7 (1940), p. 115. Stefan Weinstock, "A New Greek Calendar and Festivals of the Sun," Journal of Roman Studies 38 (1948), p. 38, gives the date as May 10. Steven K. Drummond and Lynn H. Nelson, The Western Frontiers of the Imperial Rome (M.E. Sharpe, 1994), p. 203, place it on May 9. for propitiating shades (lemures or larvae) of those whose untimely death left them wandering the earth instead of passing into the underworld. The ceremonies of the Lemuria, in the vivid description of Ovid, featured the spitting of black beans as an especially potent apotropaic gesture.Michael Lipka, Roman Gods: A Conceptual Approach (Brill, 2009), p. 43. The second of the Rosaliae signorum occurred on May 31, the day before the Kalends of June.Phillips, Oxford Classical Dictionary, quotes the calendar as pridie kal. Iunias ob rosalias signorum supplicatio; that is, as occurring on the day before the Kalends of June. The feast day of June 1, devoted to the tenebrous Dea Carna ("Flesh Goddess" or "Food Goddess") and commonly called the "Bean Kalends" (Kalendae Fabariae),Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.12.33. may have pertained to rites of the deadIn the conjecture of Wissowa; William Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic (London, 1908), p 131. Fowler is cautious about over-interpreting the evidence to characterize all these occasions as "rites of the dead". and like the days of the Lemuria was marked on the calendar as nefastus, a time when normal activities were religiously prohibited. In the later Empire, the Rosaliae signorum coincided with the third day of the "Bean Games" (Ludi Fabarici) held May 29 – June 1, presumably in honor of Carna.Salzman, On Roman Time, pp. 92, 122, 127; Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.12.33. A civilian inscription records a bequest for rose-adornment "on the Carnaria", interpreted by Mommsen as Carna's Kalends.CIL 3.3893; Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 131.

Sculpture from a 3rd-century military headquarters at Coria, in Roman Britain (Corbridge, Northumberland), has been interpreted as representing the Rosaliae.Fishwick, "Dated Inscriptions and the Feriale Duranum," pp. 351–352. A 3rd-century inscription from Mogontiacum (present-day Mainz), in the province of Germania Superior, records the dedication of an altar to the Genius of the military unit (a centuria), on May 10. Although the inscription does not name the Rosaliae, the date of the dedication, made in connection with Imperial cult, may have been chosen to coincide with it.CIL 13.6681; Fishwick, "Dated Inscriptions and the Feriale Duranum," p. 356.

File:010 Conrad Cichorius, Die Reliefs der Traianssäule, Tafel X.jpg, on a relief panel from Trajan's Column; under the tree are military trumpeters playing tubae and cornua]]

The Rosaliae signorum were part of devotional practices characteristic of the army surrounding the military standards. The Imperial historian Tacitus says that the army venerated the standards as if they were gods, and inscriptions record dedications (vota) made on their behalf.CIL 7.1030 is an example of such a dedication from Roman Britain: Drummond and Nelson, The Western Frontiers of Imperial Rome, p. 214; G.R. Watson, The Roman Soldier (Cornell University Press, 1969, 1985), p. 130. The day on which a legion marked the anniversary of its formation was the natalis aquilae, "the Eagle's birthday," in reference to the Roman eagle of the standard.Hooey, "Rosaliae signorum," p. 19; Pat Southern, The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 161; Brian Campbell, The Roman Army, 31 BC–AD 337: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 1994), [https://books.google.com/books?id=RUN-TGktYLYC&dq=%22rosaliae+signorum%22&pg=PT136 n.p.] All Roman military camps, including marching camps, were constructed around a central altar where daily sacrifices were made, surrounded by the standards planted firmly into the groundHooey, "Rosaliae signorum," p. 17; Graham Webster, The Roman Imperial Army: Of the First and Second Centuries A.D. (University of Oklahoma Press, 1979, 3rd ed. 1998), p. 133. and by images of emperors and gods.Allen Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 182. Decorated units displayed gold and silver wreaths on their standards that represented the bestowal of living wreaths, and the Eagles and other signa were garlanded and anointed for lustrations, ceremonies for beginning a campaign, victories, crisis rituals, and Imperial holidays.Pliny, Natural History 13.3.23; Suetonius, Claudius 13; Hooey, "Rosaliae signorum," pp. 17–19; Webster, The Roman Imperial Army, pp. 106 (note 16) and 133. Among these occasions was the wedding of the emperor Honorius in 398 AD, described in an epithalamium by Claudian: the military standards are said to grow red with flowers, and the standard-bearers and soldiers ritually shower the imperial bridegroom with flowers purpureoque ... nimbo, in a purple halo.Hooey, "Rosaliae signorum," pp. 18 and 32, citing Claudian 10.187–188 and 295–297. In recounting a mutiny against Claudius in 42 AD, Suetonius avers that divine agency prevented the Eagles from being adorned or pulled from the earth to break camp by the legionaries who had violated their oath (sacramentum); reminded of their religious obligation, they were turned toward repentance (in paenitentiam religione conversis).Webster, The Roman Imperial Army, p. 106, citing Suetonius, Claudius 13. Christian apologists saw the veneration of the signa as central to the religious life of the Roman military, and Minucius Felix tried to demonstrate that because of the cruciform shape, the soldiers had been worshipping the Christian cross without being aware of it.Hooey, "Rosaliae signorum," p. 16, especially note 3, citing Tertullian Apologeticum 16 and Ad nationes 1.12, and Minucius Felix 29.6–7; p. 206

Most evidence of the Rosalia from the Empire of the 1st–3rd centuries points toward festivals of the dead. Soldiers commemorated fallen comrades,Hooey, "Rosaliae signorum," pp. 23–25. and might swear an oath on the manes (deified spirits) of dead brothers-in-arms.Silius Italicus, Punica 6.113–116; Charles W. King, "The Roman Manes: The Dead as Gods," in Rethinking Ghosts in World Religions (Brill, 2009), p. 112. Hooey, however, argued against interpreting the Rosaliae signorum as a kind of "poppy day". Roman rose festivals, in his view, were of two distinct and mutually exclusive kinds: the celebratory and licentious festivals of spring, and the somber cult of the dead. Transferred from the civilian realm, the old festivals of vegetative deities were celebrated in the Eastern Empire in a spirit of indulgence and luxury that was uniquely out of keeping with the public and Imperial character of other holidays on the Feriale Duranum.Hooey, "Rosaliae signorum," pp. 23–26, 32–35. Webster, The Roman Imperial Army, p. 150, accepts Hooey's "carnival" interpretation. This "carnival" view of the Rosaliae signorum was rejected by William Seston, who saw the May festivals as celebratory lustrations after the first battles of the military campaigning season, coordinate with the Tubilustrium that fell on May 23 between the two rose-adornments.William Seston, "Feldzeichen," in Scripta Varia. Mélanges d'histoire romaine, de droit, d'épigraphie et d'histoire du christianisme (Publications de l'École française de Rome, 1980), p. 273.

File:9595 - Milano - Museo archeologico - Patera di Parabiago - Foto Giovanni Dall'Orto 13 Mar 2012.jpg; embossed silver, ca. 200–400 AD, found in a tomb near Milan, now at the Archaeological Museum of Milan)]]

The Tubilustrium was itself a purification ritual. Attested on calendars for both March 23 and May 23, it was perhaps originally monthly. The lustration (lustrum) was performed regarding the annunciatory trumpets (tubi or tubae, a long straight trumpet, and cornua, which curved around the body) that were used to punctuate sacral games and ceremonies, funerals,Jörg Rüpke, The Roman Calendar from Numa to Constantine: Time, History, and the Fasti, translated by David M.B. Richardson (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, originally published in German 1995), pp. 28–29; Pat Southern, The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 159. and for signals and timekeeping in the military.Southern, The Roman Army, p. 159; Yann Le Bohec, The Imperial Roman Army (Routledge, 2001, originally published 1989 in French), p. 50; Webster, The Roman Imperial Army, p. 140. The March 23 Tubilustrium coincided in the city of Rome with a procession of Mars' armed priests the Salii, who clanged their sacred shields. In the later Empire, it had become assimilated into the "holy week" of Attis, occurring on the day when the tree rested at the Temple of the Magna Mater. As a pivotal point in the cycle of death/chaos and (re)birth/order, the day brought together noise rituals of wind and percussion instruments from different traditions, the clamor of the Corybantes or Kouretes who attended Cybele and Attis, and Roman ceremonies of apotropaic trumpet blasts or the beating of shields by the Salian priests,Salzman, On Roman Time,, pp. 166–167. Alvar, Romanising Oriental Gods, p. 73, cites Julian, Oratio 5.169c, on the sounding of trumpets after the castration of Attis. who were theologically identified with the Kouretes as early as the 1st century BC.The Salii identified with the Kouretes by Dionysius of Halicarnassus 2.70–71 (see also Catullus 63, who attributes the tripudium dance of the Salii to the ecstatic followers of Cybele and Attis); Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, p. 296.

Tacitus records the performance of noise rituals on the trumpets by the military in conjunction with a lunar eclipse.Tacitus, Annales 1.28; Southern, The Roman Army, p. 159; Rüpke, The Roman Calendar, p. 28, especially note 44. The practice is found in other sources in a civilian context.Rüpke, The Roman Calendar, p. 28, citing Juvenal 6.442–443 and Livy 26.5.9. Jörg Rüpke conjectures that the tubae were played monthly "to fortify the waning moon (Luna)", one nundinal cycle after the full moon of the Ides, since the Roman calendar was originally lunar.Rüpke, The Roman Calendar, p. 28. Rüpke argues that the Tubilustrium continued to be monthly, with the likely exception of February—a month already largely consumed with the care of the dead—but in other months its spot on calendars was overwritten by festivals that doubled up on the date. The signa and the trumpets were closely related in Roman military culture, both ceremonially and functionally, and on Trajan's Column the trumpets are shown pointing toward the standards during lustrations.Webster, The Roman Imperial Army, p. 134. Although Latin lustratio is usually translated as "purification", lustral ceremonies should perhaps be regarded as realignments and restorations of good order: "lustration is another word for maintaining, creating or restoring boundary lines between the centric order and the ex-centric disorder".Versnel, Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion, pp. 311–312, 321; Jörg Rüpke, Domi Militiae: Die Religiöse Konstruktion des Krieges in Rom (Franz Steiner, 1990), pp. 144–146. The Rosaliae of the standards in May were contingent on supplicationes, a broad category of propitiatory ritual that realigned the community, in this case the army, with the pax deorum, the "treaty" or peace of the gods, by means of a procession, public prayers, and offerings. The military calendar represented by the Feriale Duranum prescribed supplicationes also for March 19–23, the period that began with the Quinquatria, an ancient festival of Minerva and Mars, and concluded with a Tubilustrium. The Crisis of the Third Century prompted a revival and expansion of the archaic practice of supplicatio in connection with military and Imperial cult.Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage, pp. 144, 149, 172–174, 182–183, 188, 191–197, 218–219, 227, 244, 248 (describing the principles of imperial supplicationes in regard to the universal supplicatio of Decius and the pax deorum).

File:Chronography of 354 Mensis Maius.png (354 AD), which places the Rosalia on May 23Salzman, On Roman Time, p. 112.]]

In the later Empire, rose festivals became part of the iconography for the month of May. The date would vary locally to accommodate the blooming season.Salzman, On Roman Time p. 98. For month allegories in mosaics, May is often represented with floral wreaths, the fillets or ribbons worn for sacrifice, and wine amphorae.Salzman, On Roman Time p. 97. May (Latin Maius) began in the middle of the Ludi Florae, a series of games in honor of the goddess Flora that opened April 28 of the Julian calendar and concluded May 3. Flora was a goddess of flowers and blooming, and her festivities were enjoyed with a notable degree of sexual liberty. In the 2nd century AD, Philostratus connects rose garlands with Flora's festival.Hooey, "Rosaliae signorum," p. 27, citing Philostratus, Epigram 55. A Greek epigram from the Palatine Anthology has May personified announce "I am the mother of roses".Anthologia Palatina 9.580.4, as cited by Hooey, "Rosaliae signorum," p. 27: εἰμὶ ῥόδων γενέτης (eimi rhodōn genetēs).

Among explanations for the month's name was that it derived from Maia, a goddess of growth or increase whose own name was sometimes said to come from the adjective maius, "greater". Maia was honored in May with her son Mercury (Greek Hermes), a god of boundaries and commerce, and a conductor of souls to the afterlife. The theological identity of Maia was capacious; she was variously identified with goddesses such as Terra Mater ("Mother Earth"), the Good Goddess (Bona Dea), the Great Mother Goddess (Magna Mater, a title also for Cybele), Ops ("Abundance, Resources"), and Carna, the goddess of the Bean Kalends on June 1.H.H.J. Brouwer, Bona Dea: The Sources and a Description of the Cult (Brill, 1989), pp. 232, 354; Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.12.16–33. These identifications probably reflect the influence of Varro, who tended to see a great number of goddesses as ultimately representing Terra. Roses were distributed to the Arval Brothers, an archaic priesthood of Rome, after their banquets for the May festival of Dea Dia.Hooey, "Rosaliae signorum," p. 27, note 57, citing the Acta Fratrum Arvalium.

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Although the month opened with the revelry of Flora, in mid-May the Romans observed the three-day Lemuria for propitiating the wandering dead.H.H. Scullard, Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic (Cornell University Press, 1981), pp. 110–111, 115–116. The season of roses thus coincided with traditional Roman festivals pertaining to blooming and dying. The demand for flowers and perfumes for festal and funerary purposes made floriculture an important economic activity, especially for the rich estates of Roman Africa.Salzman, On Roman Time, pp. 97–99; Holleran, Shopping in Ancient Rome, pp. 58, 119, 208–210. One Roman tomb painting shows vendors displaying floral garlands for sale.Holleran, Shopping in Ancient Rome, p. 210. Following the Lemuria, Mercury and Maia received a joint sacrifice during a merchants' festival on the Ides of May (the 15th). The Calendar of Filocalus (354 AD) notes a flower fair on May 23, when the roses come to market (macellus).Macellus rosas sumat: Phillips, Oxford Classical Dictionary, p. 1335. The month is illustrated for this calendar with a king of roses: a young man, wearing the long-sleeved robe called a dalmatica, carries a basket of roses on his left arm while holding a single flower in his right hand to smell. In other pictorial calendars, the Rose King or related imagery of the rose festival often substitutes for or replaces the traditional emblem of Mercury and his rites to represent May.Salzman, On Roman Time, pp. 97–99.

In Ovid's Fasti, a poem about the Roman calendar, Flora as the divine representative of May speaks of her role in generating flowers from the blood of the dead: "through me glory springs from their wound".Ovid, Fasti 5.228 (de quorum per me volnere surgit honor); Carole E. Newlands, Playing with Time: Ovid and the Fasti (Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 110; Hersch, The Roman Wedding, p. 91. Ovid shows how her mythology weaves together themes of "violence, sexuality, pleasure, marriage, and agriculture."Hersch, The Roman Wedding, p. 91. The Romans considered May an unpropitious month for weddings, a postponement that contributed to the popularity of June as a bridal month. Each day of the Lemuria in mid-May was a dies religiosus, when it was religiously prohibited to begin any new undertaking, specifically including marriage "for the sake of begetting children".Hersch, The Roman Wedding, pp. 46–47 and 90, citing Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.16.18, noting that the Lemuria and the procession of the Argei, which even the Romans themselves regarded as obscure and dauntingly archaic, endowed the entire month with an uneasy feeling.

In the 4th century, the Rosalia was marked on the official calendar as a public holiday at the amphitheater with games (ludi) and theatrical performances. A calendar from Capua dating to 387 AD notes a Rosaria at the amphitheater on May 13.Feriale Capuanum (387 AD): III id. mai(as) Rosaria Amphitheatri; Salzman, On Roman Time p. 98.

File:Sassoferrato Our Lady in a garland of roses.jpg, portraying the Madonna with both a crown of stars and a rose wreath]]

In the 6th century, a "Day of Roses" was held at Gaza, in the Eastern Roman Empire, as a spring festival that may have been a Christianized continuation of the Rosalia.Nicole Belayche, "Pagan Festivals in Fourth-Century Gaza," p. 17, citing Chorichius, and Talgam, "The Ekphrasis Eikonos of Procopius," pp. 223–224, both in Christian Gaza in Late Antiquity. John of Gaza wrote two anacreontic poems that he says he presented publicly on "the day of the roses", and declamations by the Christian rhetorician ProcopiusNot the historian. and poetry by Choricius of Gaza are also set at rose-days.Westberg, "The Rite of Spring," in Plotting with Eros, p. 189: ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῶν ῥόδων; Talgam, "The Ekphrasis Eikonos of Procopius," p. 223.

Roses were in general part of the imagery of Early Christian funerary art,Robin M. Jensen, "Christian Art," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 93. as was ivy.Gillian MacKie, "Symbolism and Purpose in an Early Christian Martyr Chapel: The Case of San Vittore in Ciel d'Oro, Milan," Gesta 34.2 (1995), pp. 93–94. Martyrs were often depicted or described with flower imagery, or in ways that identified them with flowers. Paulinus of Nola (d. 431) reinterpreted traditions associated with the Rosalia in Christian terms for his natal poem (natalicium) about Saint Felix of Nola, set January 14:Patricia Cox Miller, "'The Little Blue Flower Is Red': Relics and the Poeticizing of the Body," Journal of Early Christian Studies 8.2 (2000), p. 228.

Sprinkle the ground with flowers, adorn the doorways with garlands. Let winter breathe forth the purple beauty (purpureum) of spring; let the year be in flower before its time, and let nature submit to the holy day. For you also, earth, owe wreaths to the martyr’s tomb. But the holy glory of the doorway to the heavens encircles him, flowering with the twin wreaths of war and peace.Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 14.110–116 = CSEL 30:50, as cited by Miller.

At one of the earliest extant martyr shrines, now part of the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan, a mosaic portrait dating perhaps as early as 397–402 depicts Saint Victor within a classically inspired wreath of lilies and roses, wheat stalks, grapes on the vine, and olive branches: the circular shape represents eternity, and the vegetation the four seasons.MacKie, "Symbolism and Purpose in an Early Christian Martyr Chapel," pp. 93–95. In the Christian imagination, the blood-death-flower pattern is often transferred from the young men of Classical myth—primarily Adonis and Attis—to female virgin martyrs.Miller, The Corporeal Imagination, p. 205. Eulalia of Mérida is described by Prudentius (d. ca. 413) as a "tender flower" whose death makes her "a flower in the Church's garland of martyrs": the flow of her purple blood produces purple violets and blood-red crocuses (purpureas violas sanguineosque crocos), which will adorn her relics.Miller, The Corporeal Imagination, pp. 75–76, quoting Jill Ross. The rose can also symbolize the blood shed with the loss of virginity in the sacrament of marriage.John D. Miller, Beads and Prayers: The Rosary in History and Devotion (Burns & Oats, 2002), pp. 166–167.

Drawing on the custom of floral crowns as awards in the Classical world, Cyprian (d. 258) described heavenly crowns of flowers for the faithful in the afterlife: lilies for those who did good works, and an additional crown of roses for martyrs.Ronald Lightbown, Carlo Crivelli (Yale University Press, 2004), p. 268. In one early passion narrative, a martyr wears a rose crown (corona rosea) at a heavenly banquet.Miller, The Corporeal Imagination, p. 75, citing the Passio Mariani et Iacobi. For Ambrose (d. 397), lilies were for virgins, violets for confessors of the faith, and roses for martyrs;Ambrose, Expositio in Lucam 7.128 (=PL 15, col. 1821), as noted by Clare Stancliffe, "Red, White and Blue Martyrdom," in Ireland in Early Mediaeval Europe. Studies in memory of Kathleen Hughes (Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 32; Lightbown, Carlo Crivelli, p. 268. of these, the imagery of the violet has no biblical precedent.Lightbown, Carlo Crivelli, p. 269. In a passage influenced by Vergilian imagery, Ambrose enjoins young women who are virgins to "Let the rose of modesty and the lily of the spirit flourish in your gardens, and let banks of violets drink from the spring that is watered by the sacred blood."Ambrose, On Virgins 4.17; Boniface Ramsey, Ambrose (Routledge, 1997), pp. 110 and 223, note 40. In the description of Jerome (d. 420), "a crown of roses and violets" is woven from the blood of Saint Paula's martyrdom.Epistle to Eustochium 108.31 = CSEL 55, p. 349, as cited by Stancliffe, "Red, White and Blue Martyrdom," pp. 30–31. Dante later entwines Classical and Christian strands of imagery in his Paradiso, linking the garland of saints with the rose corona of Ariadne, whom he imagines as translated to the heavens by it.Dante, Paradiso 13.13–15, as noted by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander, Dante: Paradiso (Anchor Books, 2007), p. 353. The use of the term "rosary" (Latin rosarium, a crown or garland of roses) for Marian prayer beads was objected to by some Christians, including Alanus de Rupe, because it evoked the "profane" rose wreath of the Romans.Anne Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), pp. 81–82. Alanus, who played a key role in the development of the rosary, preferred the term "psalter".

File:Theresienschräin.jpg, inscribed with her motto "After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses"; she wears a floral wreathJohn J. Delaney, Dictionary of Saints (Random House, 2005), p. 656.]]

Miracles involving roses are ascribed to some female saints, while roses are a distinguishing attribute of others ranging from Cecilia of Rome (d. 230 AD) to Thérèse of Lisieux (d. 1897).Stephen Wilson, "Cults of Saints in the Churches of Central Paris," in Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore, and History (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 242. The floral iconography of Saint Cecilia includes a rose or floral wreath, a palm branch, and a "tall sprig of almond leaves and flowers in her hand".A Glossary of Ecclesiastical Terms, edited by Orby Shipley (London, Oxford and Cambridge, 1872), pp. 99–100. Roses are among the most characteristic attributes of Mary, mother of Jesus, who became associated with the month of May,Richard Griffiths, Pen and the Cross: Catholicism and English Literature 1850–2000 (Continuum, 2010), p. 39. replacing goddesses such as Maia and Flora in the popular imagination.Charlene Spretnak, Missing Mary: The Queen of Heaven and Her Re-emergence in the Modern Church (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 222–223; Lorraine Kochanske Stock, "Lords of the Wildwood: The Wild Man, the Green Man, and Robin Hood," in Robin Hood in Popular Culture: Violence, transgression, and justice (D.S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 242, 245–247; J. Miller, Beads and Prayers, pp. 166–167. Mary is described in early Christian literature as a rosa pudoris, "rose of modesty",Ambrose, De virginibus 3, noted by Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, p. 88. and a rose among thorns.Sedulius, Paschale carmen, as cited by Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, p. 88. In the Middle Ages, roses, lilies and violets become the special flowers of Mary.Lightbown, Carlo Crivelli, p. 268. In some Catholic cultures, offerings of flowers are still made to Mary, notably in Mexican devotional practices for Our Lady of Guadalupe.Timothy Matovina, Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America's Largest Church (Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 175. On the island of Pollap, in Micronesia, offerings of flowers before the cult statue of Mary are added to ceremonies of the rosary especially for May; the concept of the rosary as a "crown of roses" complements local traditions of wearing a flower wreath on the head.Juliana Flinn, Mary, the Devil, and Taro: Catholicism and Women's Work in a Micronesian Society (University of Hawaii Press, 2010), pp. 147–148, 151. Latin hymns and litanies from the earliest Christian era name Mary as the "Mystical Rose" and by an array of rose epithets, or as a garden that bore Christ in the image of the rose.Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, pp. 88–89 et passim; J. Miller, Beads and Prayers, p. 166. Ambrose declared that the blood of Christ in the Eucharist, transubstantiated from wine, was to be perceived as a rose.Ambrose of Milan, on Psalm 118: Cernis Rosam, hoc est dominici corporis sanguineum, as quoted by R.T. Hampson, Medii Aevi Kalendarium, or Dates, Charters, and Customs of the Middle Ages (London,1841), vol. 1, p. 87. The five-petaled rose became a symbol of the Five Wounds of Christ and hence of the Resurrection.J. Miller, Beads and Prayers, p. 166.

The living bodies and corpses of saints were said to exude a floral "odor of sanctity" as one of the most notable signs of their holiness.Constance Classen, The Color of Angels: Cosmology, Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination (Routledge, 1998), pp. 36–37. Pope Gregory I described the fragrance and luminosity of the rose as issuing from the blood of martyrs.Lightbown, Carlo Crivelli, p. 269. Herman of Steinfeld exhaled a fragrance "like a garden full of roses, lilies, violets, poppies and all kinds of fragrant flowers" as he prayed.Classen, The Color of Angels, p. 37. The bedridden virgin Lydwine of Schiedam was said to consume nothing but spiced wine, and wept "fragrant tears of blood" which she called her roses; when these dried on her cheeks overnight, they were gathered and kept in a box. The omen of her death was the opening of roses on a mystical rosebush, and when she was buried the bag of rose blood-tears was used as her pillow.Classen, The Color of Angels, pp. 38–39. Flowers, blood, and relics were interwoven in the imagery of Christian literature from the earliest period.Miller, The Corporeal Imagination, p. 73.

File:Albrecht Dürer - Feast of Rose Garlands - Google Art Project.jpg (1506) by Dürer, an altarpiece for a rosary confraternity: a whole community is joined in receiving white and red rose crownsNathan Mitchell, The Mystery of the Rosary: Marian Devotion and the Reinvention of Catholicism (New York University Press, 2009), pp. 25–27.]]

Two days of the liturgical calendar have been called "Rose Sunday":

1. The fourth Sunday of Lent is also known as Dominica de rosa ("Rose Sunday"), when rose-colored vestments may replace the purple or violet penitential vestments of the season. On this day the Pope blesses the Golden Rose, a jewel in the shape of a rose.P.M.J. Rock, "Golden Rose," in The Catholic Encyclopedia (1909), vol. 6, p. 629; Matthew Bunson, Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic History (Our Sunday Visitor, 1995, 2004), p. 403. Benedict, a canon of St. Peter's Basilica in the mid-12th century, recorded a ceremony on this day when the Pope carried a moss-wrapped rose in the Stations of the Cross.The station on this fourth Sunday of Lent was at S. Croce in Ierusalemme, and the route took the Pope back to the Lateran Palace, where he presented the rose to the city prefect; H. E. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085 (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 14, citing Benedict, cap. 36, p. 150. A 19th-century ecclesiastical lexicographer saw the Golden Rose as having functions analogous to the Golden Bough, with Mary assuming attributes of Persephone.Hampson, Medii Aevi Kalendarium, pp. 342–343.
2. In medieval Rome, a Dominica de Rosis (Sunday of Roses) or Pascha rosarum or rosatum was celebrated on the Sunday before Pentecost for the octave of the Feast of the Ascension. The Pope delivered a sermon about the Holy Spirit on this day at the Santa Maria Rotunda, the basilica converted from the ancient Pantheon. Rose petals were showered through the oculus in the dome to represent the descent of the tongues of flame.Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, p. 14, citing Benedict, cap. 61, p. 157Cristina Mazzoni, Saint Hysteria: Neurosis, Mysticism, and Gender in European Culture (Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 144F.G. Holweck, entry on "Paschal Tide," The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1911), vol. 11, p. 517Hampson, Medii Aevi Kalendarium, pp. v and 86–87, also citing the Liber Pollicitus (n. 59, also found as Liber Politicus) of Benedict. See also Johann Herolt, Sermo xxvi, Sermones Discipuli in Quadragesima (Venice, 1599), p. 84; Francesco Antonio Zaccaria, Onomasticum Rituale selectum (1787), p. 122; Sanctissimi domini nostri Benedicti Papae XIV Bullarium (1827), vol. 12, p. 133; Adriano Cappelli, Cronologia, cronografia e calendario perpetuo (Hoepli, 1998), p. 142. After dinner, a ludus Carnelevaris was celebrated with drinking among the knights and soldiers, followed by performances which featured the killing of animals that symbolized various sins.This included "the killing of a bear to symbolize the devil who tempted the flesh, of bullocks to symbolize their pride, and of a cockerel to symbolize their lusts; thus, they might live chastely and soberly, and keep a good Easter": Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, p. 14, citing Benedict, cap. 7(5), p. 172.

:: Following this tradition, in medieval texts Pentecost is sometimes called Rosata Pascha or simply Rosalia.Hampson, Medii Aevi Kalendarium, p. 341. Eventually, Pentecost itself took on the name of "Rose Sunday" as the two became conflated and customs were transferred from to the other. The custom of scattering roses for Pentecost spread and has continued to the modern era, as reflected in contemporary feast names such as the {{lang|it|Pasqua di rose}}, {{lang|it|Pasqua delle rose}}, or {{lang|fr|Pâques rosées}}.Mazzoni, Saint Hysteria, p. 144. Reflecting this custom, many churches are built with a "Holy Ghost hole" in the ceiling for the release of rose petals or white doves.Gertrud Muller Nelson, To Dance With God: Family Ritual and Community Celebration (Paulist Press, 1986), p. 27Diana L. Eck, Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras (Beacon Press, 1993, 2003), p. 130Christopher Hill, Holidays and Holy Nights: Celebrating Twelve Seasonal Festivals of the Christian Year (Theosophical Publishing House, 2003), pp. 151–152. The traditional Romanian name for Pentecost is Rusalii and is thought to derive from Rosalia.Theodore A. Koehler,"The Christian Symbolism of the Rose", Roses and the Arts: A Cultural and Horticultural Engagement, Central State University, Wilberforce, Ohio, May 8, 1986.[http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/rosarymarkings36.html] The name Rusalii is also used in Russian and Ukrainian, alongside the related term "Green week" ({{langx|ru|Зелёные святки}}; {{langx|uk|Зелені свята}}).

:: Some authors from the 19th and early-20th centuries speculated that this Rose Sunday was a Christianized form of the originally pagan festival.John G.R. Forlong, Encyclopedia of Religions (1906, reprint 2008), vol. 3, p. [https://books.google.com/books?id=FpXGJQeaatkC&pg=PA205 205]{{cite journal |last1=White |first1=C.A. |title=The Pope's Golden Rose |journal=Notes and Queries |volume=3 |year=1893 |page=343 |url=https://archive.org/details/s8notesqueries03londuoft/page/342/mode/2up |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=London}}

• Ancient Greek funeral and burial practices
• Roman funerals and burial
• {{ill|Rusalia|ru|Русалии}} a festival in memory of the dead of the ancient Slavs

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