252 SYLVA BOOK iv 



because the holy Babylas had been interr'd near that 

 oracle ; for which it was reputed so venerable, that 

 there remained an express title in the code, de cupressis 

 ex luco Daphnes non excidendis^ ve/ venundandis, that 

 none should either fell, or sell any of the trees about 

 it ; which may serve for another instance of their 

 burying in such places. The truth is, so exceedingly 

 superstitious they were and tender, that there was 

 almost no medling with these devoted trees, and even 

 before they did but conlucare and prune one of them, 

 they were first to sacrifice lest they might offend in 

 something ignorantly : But to cut down was capital, 

 and never to be done away with any offering what- 

 soever ; and therefore conlucare in authors, is not (as 

 some pretend) sue cider e y but to prune the branches 

 only ; and yet even this gentle tonsure of superfluities 

 was reputed a kind of contamination ; and hence lucus 

 coinquinari dicitur^ unless in the case of lightning, 

 when caelo tacti^ a whole tree might quite be felled, 

 as marked, by heaven for the fire : But of this suffi- 

 cient. We could indeed fill many sheets with the 

 catastrophe of such as maliciously destroy'd groves, 

 to feed either their revenge or avarice : See Plutarch 

 in Pericles^ and the saying of Pompeius: Cicero sharply 

 reproves C. Gabinius for his prodigious spoil in Greece; 

 and it was of late days held a piece of inhumanity in 

 Charles, the French king, when he entred the Prisons 

 after he had slain their leader, to cut down their 

 woods, a punishment never inflicted by sober princes, 

 but to prevent idolatry in the old law; and to shew the 

 heinousness of disloyalty and treason by latter sanctions; 

 in which case, and for terror, even a tray tor's woods 

 have become anathema, as were easie to instance out 

 of histories. 



