Some Ancient Greek Statues Smelled Like Roses
Ancient Greek and Roman statues are still awe-inspiring thousands of years later—arguably even more so because of their age. Still, the pieces that have survived the test of time didn’t do so with all their colors, extremities, accessories, or, it turns out, smells intact.
Ancient sculptors used a variety of oils, waxes, flowers, and herbs to add olfactory dimension to their work, and roses were an especially popular fragrance. A 2025 study published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeologyshined a light on the practice, but ancient texts by the likes of Cicero, Pliny the Elder, and others also mention perfuming statues of deities and rulers. The ancient Greek scholar Callimachus once noted, for instance, that a statue of Egyptian Queen Berenice II was “still wet with perfume.” In a practice they called kosmesis, ancient Greeks would lavishly adorn statues of deities with jewelry, textiles, and oils as a part of religious observances, and perfuming was often included in this ritual. In the Delian temples on the Greek island of Delos, worshippers used a perfume called myron rhodion, made from oil, rushes, and rose petals. Some statues’ smells came from garlands of fresh flowers. Other scents came as a result of normal maintenance, since people would preserve statues by rubbing them in wax and oil, sometimes with pungent additives such as spikenard (aka muskroot).
Scent held deep significance in the lives of ancient Greeks and Romans, from the perfume they adorned themselves with to the smells of animal sacrifices sent up to the gods—so it only follows that their works of art would integrate smell as well.
Source: historyfacts.com