BOOK XV. XIX. 71-XX. 75 



varieties of this kind bear three times a year. The 

 extremely sweet fig called the ona grows only at 

 Taranto. Cato makes the following remark ahout r.r.viiia. 

 figs : ' Plant the marisca fig in a chalky or open 

 place, but the African, Herculanean and Sagun- 

 tine kinds, the winter fig and the black long-stalked 

 Telanian in a richer soil or in one well manured.' 

 Since his day so many names and varieties have 

 arisen that a consideration of this alone is enough to 

 show how our way of Hfe has been transformed. 

 Some provinces also have winter figs, for instance 

 Moesia, but these are a product of art and not of 

 nature. There is a small kind of fig-tree which is 

 banked up with manure at the end of autumn and the 

 figs on it are overtaken by winter while still unripe ; 

 and when milder weather comes the figs, together 

 with the tree, are dug up again and restored to Hght ; 

 and just as if born again they greedily imbibe 

 the warmth of the new sun, a different one from the 

 sun through which they hved before," and begin to 

 ripen along with the blossom of the coming crop, 

 maturing in a year that does not belong to them ; the 

 region is an extremely cold one.* 



XX. But the variety which even in his day Cato HUtorfcai 

 termed the African fig reminds us of his having X2%*. 

 employed that fruit for a remarkable demonstration. 

 Burning with a mortal hatred of Carthage and anxious 

 in regard to the safety of his descendants, at every 

 meeting of the senate he used to vociferate ' Down 

 with Carthage ! ' and so on a certain occasion he 

 brought into the house an early ripe fig from that 

 province, and displaying it to the Fathers he said, ' I 

 put it to you, when do you think this fruit was plucked 

 from the tree ? ' Everybody agreed that it was quite 



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