310 PLINY* S NATURAL HISTOKY. [Book XY. 



to our walls." It was immediately after this occurrence that 

 the third Punic war commenced, in which Carthage was 

 destroyed; though Cato had breathed his last, the year after this 

 event. In this trait which are we the most to admire ? was it 

 ingenuity 69 and foresight on his part, or was it an accident that 

 was thus aptly turned to advantage ? which, too, is the most 

 surprising, the extraordinary quickness of the passage which 

 must have been made, or the bold daring of the man ? The 

 thing, however, that is the most astonishing of all; — indeed, I 

 can conceive nothing more truly marvellous — is the fact that a 

 city thus mighty, the rival of Rome for the sovereignty of the 

 world during a period of one hundred and twenty years, owed 

 its fall at last to an illustration drawn from a single fig ! 



Thus did this fig effect that which neither Trebia nor Thrasi- 

 menus, not Cannae itself, graced with the entombment of the 

 Eoman renown, not the Punic camp entrenched within three 

 miles of the city, not even the disgrace of seeing Hannibal 

 riding up to the Colline Gate, could suggest the means of 

 accomplishing. It was left for a fig, in the hand of Cato, to 

 show how near was Carthage to the gates of Rome ! 



In the Forum even, and in the very midst of the Comitium 70 

 of Rome, a fig-tree is carefully cultivated, in memory of the 

 consecration which took place on the occasion of a thunder- 

 bolt 71 which once fell on that spot ; and still more, as a me- 

 morial of the fig-tree which in former days overshadowed 

 Romulus and Remus, the founders of our empire, in the Lu- 

 percal Cave. This tree received the name of " rurninalis," 

 from the circumstance that under it the wolf was found giving 

 the breast — rumis it was called in those days — to the two 

 infants. A group in bronze was afterwards erected to con- 

 secrate the remembrance of this miraculous event, as, through 

 the agency of Attus Navius the augur, the tree itself had 



eluded both days in the computation; the one they dated from, and the 

 day of, the event. 



99 In sending for the fig, and thinking of this method of speaking to 

 the feelings of his fellow-countrymen. 



70 A place hi the Forum, where public meetings were held, and certain 

 offences tried. 



71 He alludes to the Puteal, or enclosed space in the Forum, consecrated 

 by Scribonius Libo, in consequence of the spot having been struck by 

 lightning. 



