Io, Persephone, and the Emperor's Emblem

In Greek myth the violet was tied to Io, whom Zeus turned into a heifer and for whom the earth put forth violets as fitting food, and to Persephone, who was gathering flowers, violets among them, when Hades carried her off to the underworld, so that the flower carried a note of spring cut short and of death. Athens took the violet as its civic emblem. In the modern era it became the badge of the Bonapartists: Napoleon, exiled to Elba, was said to have promised to return with the violets in spring, and Corporal Violet became a secret Bonapartist token. Modesty, the Virgin, spring, the underworld and a hidden political loyalty all gather to the small scented purple flower of the woods.

Violets have a genuine culinary history distinct from their symbolism: candied or crystallised violet petals have been made as a delicacy since at least the nineteenth century, with Toulouse in southern France particularly associated with the craft, and violet flavouring, extracted as a genuine essential oil rather than the synthetic ionone now more commonly used, appears in traditional sweets, liqueurs and the violette de Toulouse confection still sold in the city today. Ancient poets gave Athens itself a violet epithet: Pindar and other classical writers called the city iostephanos, violet-crowned, a civic nickname that long predates and sits alongside the flower's later role as a secret Bonapartist badge.