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. Accordingly, 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' the consul's view 



Slew three opposers : Tarquin'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., &c.), boughs of oak were carried in the Eleusinian Mys- 

 teries. 



" Then crown'd with oaken chaplets tnarch'd the priest 

 Of Eleusinian Ceres, and with boughs 

 Of oak were overshadow 'd in the feast 

 The teeming basket and the mystic vase." TIOIIE. 



Virgil, in the first Georgic, says, 



" Bacchus and fostering Ceres, powers divine ! 

 Who gave us corn for mast, for water wine." UHYDEN'S J'irgil. 



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, 

 Which first Triptolemene taught to be sown." 



Boughs of oak with acorns were carried in marriage ceremonies, as emblems 

 of fecundity. (Archceol. Attic., 167.) Sophocles, in the fragment of Rlrizolonri, 

 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.) OftheHer- 

 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 ry xvi. 2.) This forest is described 



