Corolla (chaplet)

A corolla is an ancient headdress made of a garland or wreath and worn as a small circlet or crown. Usually it has ceremonial significance and represents victory or authority.

The term corolla and/or corollæ appears in a chapter title in Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia: "Who invented the art of making garlands: When they first received the name of 'corollæ,' and for what reason."

The term was used to describe a crown made from branches and twigs of trees worn by victors in sacred contests. Later, flowers, colors and smells were used to "heighten the effect".). Glyccra challenged Pausias to a contest where she would repeatedly vary her designs, and thus it was (as Pliny described it) "in reality a contest between art and Nature". This invention is traced only to later than the 100th Olympiad via Pausias paintings.

These "chaplets of flowers" became fashionable and evolved into the Egyptian chaplets using ivy, narcissus, pomegranate blossoms. According to Pliny, P. Claudius Pulcher introduced winter corollæ, made for the time at which flowers and plant matter are not available of thin laminæ of horn stained various colors.

Slowly, the name was introduced at Rome, these garlands being known there at first as "corollæ" (the diminutive of corona), a name Pliny says was given them to express the "remarkable delicacy of their texture."

Later, these head dresses were made of thin plates of copper, gilt or silvered, and were called "corollaria", as introduced by Crassus Dives as a way to confer a greater honor when receiving them.

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