BOOK XII. V. 9- II 



V. Famous plane-trees are ; (1) one that grew in 



Faniovs 



the walks of the Academy at Athens, the roots ^f ?"'"^" '""*• 

 which were 50 feet long and spread wider than the 

 branches ; (2) at the present day there is a celebrated 

 plane in Lycia, allied with the amenity of a cool 

 spring ; it stands by the roadside Hke a dwelHng- 

 house, with a hollow cavity inside it 81 feet across, 

 forming with its summit a shady grove, and shielding 

 itself with vast branches as big as trees and covering 

 the fields with its long shadows, and so as to complete 

 its resemblance to a grotto, embracing inside it mossy 

 pumice-stones in a circular rim of rock — a tree so 

 worthy to be deemed a marvel that Licinius Mucianus, 

 who was three times consul and recently Heutenant- 

 governor of the province, thought it worth handing 

 down to posterity also that he had held a banquet 

 with eighteen members of his retinue inside the tree, 

 which itself provided couches of leafage on a bounte- 

 ous scale, and that he had then gone to bed in the 

 same tree, shielded from every breath of w4nd, and 

 receiving more deHght from the agreeable sound of 

 the rain dropping through the foHage than gleaming 

 marble, painted decorations or gilded paneUing could 

 have afforded. (3) Another instance is connected 

 with the Emperor CaHgula, who on an estate at 

 VeHetri was impressed by the flooring of a single plane- 

 tree, and benches laid loosely on beams consisting 

 of its branches, and held a banquet in the tree — ■ 

 himself constituting a considerable portion of the 

 shadow " — in a dining-room large enough to hold 

 fifteen guests and the servants : this dining-room 

 the emperor caHed his ' nest.' (4) There is a single 

 plane-tree at the side of a spring at Gortyn in the 

 island of Crete which is celebrated in records written 



