Chap. 42.] CINNAMOMUAI. 137 



below. 36 It is the luxury which is displayed by man, even in 

 the paraphernalia of death, that has rendered Arabia thus 

 "happy;" and which prompts him to burn with the dead 

 what was originally understood to have been produced for the 

 service of the gods. Those who are likely to be the best 

 acquainted with the matter, assert that this country does not 

 produce, in a whole year, so large a quantity of perfumes as 

 was burnt by the Emperor Nero at the funeral obsequies of 

 his wife Poppeea. And then let us only take into account 

 the vast number of funerals that are celebrated throughout the 

 whole world each year, and the heaps of odours that are 

 piled up in honour of the bodies of the dead ; the vast quanti- 

 ties, too, that are offered to the gods in single grains ; and yet, 

 when men were in the habit of offering up to them the salted 

 cake, they did not show themselves any the less propitious ; 

 nay, rather, as the facts themselves prove, they were even 

 more favourable to us than they are now. But it is the sea of 

 Arabia that has even a still greater right to be called " happy," 

 for it is this that furnishes us with pearls. At the very lowest 

 computation, India, the Seres, and the Arabian Peninsula, 

 withdraw from our empire one hundred millions of sesterces 

 every year — so dearly do we pay for our luxury and our 

 women. How large a portion, too, I should like to know, of 

 all these perfumes, really comes to the gods of heaven, and the 

 deities of the shades below ? 



CHAP. 42. (19.) — CINNAMOMUai. 37 XYLOCINNAHTJM. 



Fabulous antiquity, and Herodotus 38 more particularly, have 

 related that cinnamomum and cassia are found in the nests of 

 certain birds, and principally that of the phoenix, in the dis- 

 tricts where Father Liber was brought up ; and that these sub- 

 stances either fall from the inaccessible rocks and trees in 

 which the nests are built, in consequence of the weight of the 

 pieces of flesh which the birds carry up, or else are brought 

 down by the aid of arrows loaded with lead. It is said, also, 



36 Because its perfumes were held in such high esteem, for burning on 

 the piles of the dead. This, of course, was doue primarily to avoid the 

 offensive smell. 



37 The hark of the Cinnamomum Zeylanicum of the modern naturalists, 

 the cinnamon-tree of Ceylon. 



38 B. hi. 



