It was among the extensive private religious practices by means of which the Romans cared for their dead, reflecting the value placed on tradition (mos maiorum, "the way of the ancestors"), family lineage, and memorials ranging from simple inscriptions to grand public works.

"[6] In some areas of the Empire, the Rosalia was assimilated to floral elements of spring festivals for Dionysus, Adonis and others, but rose-adornment as a practice was not strictly tied to the cultivation of particular deities, and thus lent itself to Jewish and Christian commemoration.

[9] 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.

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.

In the Gnostic text On the Origin of the World, possibly dating to the early 4th century,[27] the rose was the first flower to come into being, created from the virgin blood of Psyche ("Soul") after she united sexually with Eros.

[29] 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.

[63] 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.

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.

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.

[72] 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.

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: ... 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 castthe lovely tresses of violets, and roses fitted to hairand voices of songs echo to the accompaniment of pipesand choruses come to Semele of the circling headband.

[87] In keeping with its theme of new growth and transformation,[88] 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.

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.

"[105] 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".

[112] 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").

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.

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".

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.

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.

[130] 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.

[141] 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.

[144] 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.

[163] 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).

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.

[168] 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.

[178] 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.

[202] 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.

[210] 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.

[230] 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.