" Several other tributes were frequently laid upon graves, as ribands; whence it is said that Epaminondas's soldiers being disanimated at seeing the riband that hung upon his spear carried by the wind to a certain Lacedæmonian sepulchre, he bid them take courage, for that it portended destruction to the Lacedæmons, it being customary to deck the sepulchres of their dead with ribands.