XLIX] Studies in primitive Greek religion. 15 



sible only to gods" it became likewise in the Greek imagina- 

 tion a place of supernatural reverence. It is much the same 

 explanation that Porphyry gives of this cult in his small trea- 

 tise On the nymphs cavern, when be says that caves and 

 similar places which through their mysterious character fill 

 the visitor with awe were by the ancients worshipped as 

 symbols of the invisible powers whose actions they believed 

 they saw in the universe ^). 



The cult of trees and plants, universal among all lower 

 races of maukind, as every classical student knows, played 

 a prominent part in Greek religion. Here^ we cannot, how- 

 ever deal with this cult at length, all the less as it has already 

 been exhaustively treated of in the well-known works of Böt- 

 ticher aud Mannhardt 2). Some few instances only may be 

 adduced, which show that the principles of Greek tree-worship 

 are the same that we find everywhere in primitive religion. 



If, as we have seen, the early Greeks regarded even ina- 

 nimate things, like stocks and stones, as living agents, we can- 

 not wonder that there existed the same belief with regard to 

 plants. These in a still higher degree than the objects of in- 

 organic nature offer characteristics which tend to make then 

 appear to an undeveloped mind as conscious beicgs, living a 

 life similar so that of man himself. Like man, the plants 

 grow up, fiourish and fall intodecay; at regular intervals they 

 dress themselves in green and again shed their leaves; they 

 produce fruits and flowers which excite the wonder of uncivi- 

 lised man. Swayed by the breeze or smitten by the storm, 

 the tree is never at rest. Murmurs are heard in its leafage 

 and its branches creak and writhe as in agony ; sounds issue 

 from the gaunt stem or hollow truuk. No wonder that even 

 the peoples of Antiquity attributed to the plants a miud and 

 sentient principle. „The trees", says Pliny at the beginning 

 of his uatural history of tho plants, „do not lack a soul more 

 than other living beiugs". They also, he adds, in oiden times 



^) Porph. De nvtro nymph. 6, 7, 9. 



*) Bötticher, Baumencultus der Hellenen, Berlin, 1857. Mannliardt, 

 Antike Wald- und Feldkulfe. Berlin, 1903. 



