1724 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III. 
. 
the cottage of Philemon, who was afterwards changed into an oak tree, they 
were treated with the greatest kindness. Philemon was a poor old man, who 
lived with his wife Baucis in Phrygia, in a miserable cottage, which Jupiter, to 
reward his hospitality, changed into a magnificent temple, of which he made 
the old couple priest and priestess, granting them the only request they made 
to him; viz. to be permitted to die together. Accurdingly, when both were 
grown so old as to wish for death, Jove turned Baucis into a lime tree, and 
Philemon into an oak; the two trees entwining their branches, and shading 
for more than a century the magnificent portal of the Phrygian temple. The 
civic crown of the Romans was formed of oak ; and it was granted for eminent 
civil services rendered to the state, the greatest of which was considered to be 
the saving of the life of a Roman citizen. Scipio Africanus, however, when 
this crown was offered to him for saving the life of his father at the battle of 
Trebia, nobly refused it, on the ground that such an action carried with it its 
own reward. Lucan alludes to this custom in his Pharsalia. 
*€ Straight Lelius from amidst the rest stood forth, 
An old centurion of distinguish’d worth : 
An oaken wreath his hardy temples bore, 
Mark of a citizen preserved he wore.” Rowe’s Lucan, book i. 
Shakspeare, when making Cominius describe the merits of Coriolanus, men- 
tions this crown, as having been won by that hero. 
‘© At sixteen years, 
When Tarquin made a head from Rome, he fought 
Beyond the mark of others : our then dictator, 
Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight, 
When with his Amazonian chin he drove 
The bristled lips before him ; he bestrid 
An o’erpress’d Roman, and i’ theconsul’s view 
Slew three opposers : ‘Targuin’s self he met, 
And struck him on his knee: in that day’s feats, 
When he might act the woman in the scene, 
He proved best man i’the field, and for his meed 
Was brow-bound with the oak.” Coriolanus, act. ii. scene 2. 
Acorns having been the common food of man till Ceres introduced corn 
(Lucretius, v. 937., &e.), boughs of oak were carried in the Eleusinian Mys- 
teries. 
‘© Then crown'd with oaken chaplets march’d the priest 
Of Eleusinian Ceres, and with boughs 
- Of oak were overshadow’d in the feast 
The teeming basket and the mystic vase.” TIGHE. 
Virgil, in the first Georgic, says, — 
** Bacchus and fostering Ceres, powers divine! 
Who gave us corn for mast, for water wine.” Drypen’s Virgil. 
And Spenser alludes to this fable in the following lines : — 
‘© The oak, whose acorns were our food before 
That Ceres’ seed of mortal man was known, 
Whieh first Triptolemene taught to be sown.” 
Boughs of oak with acorns were carried in marriage ceremonies, as emblems 
of fecundity. (Archeol. Altic., 167.) Sophocles, in the fragment of Rhizotom, 
describes Hecate as crowned with oak leaves and serpents. Pliny relates of 
the oaks on the shores of the Cauchian Sea, that, undermined by the waves, 
and propelled by the winds, they bore off with them vast masses of earth on their 
interwoven roots, and occasioned the greatest terror to the Romans, whose 
fleets encountered these floating islands. (Hist. Nat., xvi. 1.) Of the Her- 
cynian Forest he says, “ These enormous oaks, unaffected by ages, and coeval 
with the world, by a destiny almost immortal, exceed all wonder. Omitting 
other circumstances, that might not gain belief, it is well known that hills are 
raised up by the encounter of the jostling roots; or, where the earth may not 
have followed, that arches, struggling with each other, and elevated to the 
very branches, are curved, as it were, into wide gateways, able to admit the 
passage of whole troops of horse.” (Ibid, xvi. 2.) This forest is described 
