S Y L V A 243 



Pliny, 1. 12. c. i. Arbores Juere numinum temp la , &c. 

 in which (says he) they did not so much revere the 

 golden and ivory statues, as the goodly trees and aw- 

 ful silence : And the consecration of these nemorous 

 places we find in Quintus Curtius, and in what Paulus 

 Diaconus relates of the Longobards, where the rites 

 are express, allur'd as 'tis likely by the gloominess of 

 the shade, procerity and altitude of the stem, floridness 

 of the leaves, and other accidents, not capable of 

 philosophizing on the physical causes, which they 

 deem'd supernatural, and plainly divine ; so as to use 

 the words of Prudentius, 



1 Here all religion paid ; whose dark recess 

 A sacred awe does on their mind impress, 

 To their wild gods 



And this deification of their trees, and amongst other 

 things, for their age and perennial viridity, says Dio- 

 dorus, might spring from the manifold use which they 

 afforded, and haply had been taught them by the gods, 

 or rather by some god-like persons, whom for their 

 worth, and the publick benefit they esteemed so; and 

 that divers of them were voic'd to have been meta- 

 morphoz'd from men into trees, and again out of trees 

 into men, as the Arcadians gloried in their birth, when 



2 Out of the teeming bark of oaks men burst, 



which perhaps they fancied, by seeing men creep 

 sometimes out of their cavities, in which they often 

 lodg'd and secur'd themselves ; 



1 Quos penes omne sacrum est, quicquid formido tremendum 

 Suaserit horrificos, quos prodigialia cogunt 



Monstra deos L. 2. Cont. Sym. 



2 Gensque virum truncis & rupto robore nati. 



