Note 1863 — BOOK XXI. AN ACCOUNT OF FLOWERS, AND THOSE USED FOR CHAPLETS MORE PARTICULARLY.

Cujacius thinks that Pliny has in view here Polemon of Athens, who when a young man, in his drunken revelry, burst into the school of Xenocrates, the philosopher, with his fellow-revellers, wearing his festive garland on his head. Being arrested, however, by the discourse, he stopped to listen, and at length, tearing off the garland, determined to enter on a more abstemious course of life. Becoming an ardent disciple of Xenocrates, he ultimately succeeded him at the head of the school. The passage as given in the text, from its apparent incompleteness, would appear to be in a mutilated state.