page 372 note g If this ornament represents a leaf in a general sense, and not a particular species, it may be taken to indicate the herbs or leaves with which the ancients adorned the altars of their gods. When Davus makes Mysis lay the child at the door of Chremes, in the play (Andria, Actus IV. Scena vi.) he gives her this direction:
Ex ara hinc sume verbenas tibi
Atque eas substerne——
Verbenæ have been defined by classical commentators and antiquaries to be any of the green herbs employed for the decoration of altars. On solemn festivals, these were each adorned with leaves or branches of the plant peculiar to their respective gods. Virgil calls the garlands with which the altars were distinguished torques, because they were twined round them:
Sæ;pe deum nexis ornatse torquibus aræ.—Georg. iv.
To Jupiter the beech was sacred, to Apollo the laurel, to Minerva the olive, to Bacchus the ivy, to Pan the pine. These festivals were termed in the general way verbenalia; so prescriptive has the custom become, that it is still retained by us at the great Christian festival of the nativity of our Lord, when we decorate our houses and churches with green branches. The leaf above delineated, I am, however, disposed to think was peculiarly the ivy, an appropriate ornament for the wine cup or patera for libation, the vegetable sacred to the God of Wine. When placed in the hands of deities, in which position its intention has been a question with the learned, or the altar consecrated to the manes of the dead, it indicated, I think, an evergreen immortality. Such was, perhaps, its symbolic meaning in other places. It is found by the force of custom on the tombs of the primitive Christians in the catacombs at Rome. An erudite and voluminous writer on the Cemeteries of the Martyrs, &c. in that city, has strangely mistaken these sacred leaves for hearts, although he had the proof to the contrary before his eyes in the very inscription, which he copied thus: 
and on the subject of this groundless fancy he observes, “Apud primævos igitur Christianos frequens sepulchris imago cordis insculpta cernitur, ad ainoris videlicet, ut enarratum est quo defunctum prosequebantur, vel certe ad innocentiae symbolum apte edocendum.”—Roma Subterranea Pauli Arringhi, lib. vi. cap. i. 379.
and on the subject of this groundless fancy he observes, “Apud primævos igitur Christianos frequens sepulchris imago cordis insculpta cernitur, ad ainoris videlicet, ut enarratum est quo defunctum prosequebantur, vel certe ad innocentiae symbolum apte edocendum.”—Roma Subterranea Pauli Arringhi, lib. vi. cap. i. 379.
