Laurel Leaf Pendant

The Laurel Crown is documented from the sixth century BCE in the Pythian Games at Delphi, awarded for athletic and artistic victory. The Romans adopted the crown for triumphal generals. A victorious commander, returning to Rome, would wear a laurel wreath in the procession to the Capitol. By the imperial period the laurel had become an emperor's standard headdress. Every coin of Augustus shows him laurelled.

In the medieval and Renaissance periods, the laurel returned as the poet's crown. Petrarch was crowned with laurel in Rome in 1341, in a ceremony deliberately modelled on the imperial. The English Poet Laureate carries the same line forward.

Even today, a graduate is a baccalaureus. "Crowned with laurel berries".

The laurel. Daphne. Apollo. Victory. The poet's crown.

The laurel (Laurus nobilis) became sacred to Apollo after the nymph Daphne, fleeing his pursuit, was transformed into the tree to escape him. Apollo then claimed the laurel as his own. The leaves were thereafter awarded at the Pythian Games to victors in athletics, poetry, and music. A peace time crown for peace time achievement.

For the quiet finishers. The ones who have just submitted, defended, run, won, completed. The laurel was the original Greek and Roman victory marker. Not for the loud win, but for the steady, finished work.

For the poets. The Pythian Games at Delphi awarded laurel crowns to the winning poets and musicians. Laureate, poeta laureatus, the bay crowned. The pendant carries that line.