BOOK XIII. XXX. 99 102 



Also wreckage frora sliips has recently shown that 

 this timber is dricd by the action of sea water, and 

 sohdifled with a hardness that resists decay, no 

 other method producing this result more powerfuUy. 

 Citrus-wood tables are best kept and pohshed by 

 rubbing with the dry hand, especially just after a 

 bath ; and they are not damaged by spilt wine, 

 as having been created for the pui-pose of wine- 

 tables. 



Few things that supply the apparatus of a more ThecUrus- 

 luxurious hfe rank with this tree, and consequently "^^^' 

 it seems desirable to dwell on it for a httle as 

 well. It was known even to Homer — the Greek 

 name for it being thyon, otherwise thya. Well, 

 Homer ^ has recorded its being burnt among unguents 

 as one of the luxuries of Circc, whom he meant to be 

 understood as a goddess — those who take the word 

 thyon to mean perfumes being greatly in error, 

 especially as in the same verse he says that cedar 

 and larch were burnt at the same time, which 

 shows that he was only speaking of trees. Ah-eady 

 Theophrastus,^ who wrote immediately after the 

 period of Alexander the Great, about 314 b.c, 

 assigns a high rank to this tree, stating that it 

 was recorded that the flooring of the old temples 

 used to be made of it and that its timber when used 

 in roofed buildings is virtually everlasting, being 

 proof against all causes of decay ; and he says that 

 no wood is more marked with veins than the root, and 

 that no products made of any other material are more 

 valuable. The finest citrus, he says, is round the 

 Temple of Hammon, but it also grows in the interior 

 of Cyrenaica. He makes no mention, however, of 

 tables made of citrus-wood, and indeed there is no 



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