BOOK XV. XX. 77-xxi. 80 



the priests is replanted. There was also a fig-tree 

 in front of the temple of Saturn, which in 404 b.c, 

 after a sacrifice had been offered by the Vestal 

 Virgins, was removed, because it was upsetting a 

 statue of Silvanus. A tree of the same kind that was 

 self-sown Hves in the middle of the forum, at the 

 spot where, when the foundations of the Empire were 

 collapsing in portent of disaster, Curtius had filled up 

 the gulf " with the greatest of treasures, I mean virtue 

 and piety and a glorious death. Likewise self-sown 

 is a vine in the same locaHty, and there is an oHve 

 planted by the care of the populace for the sake of 

 the shade ; an altar in the forum was removed on 

 the occasion of the gladiatorial show given by his late 

 Majesty JuHus, the most recent one that fought in 

 the forum. 



XXI. A remarkable fact about the fig is that this Fig-growtng ; 

 alone among aU the fruits hastens to ripen with a ^«^^<^*'^- 

 rapidity due to the skiU of nature. There is a wild 

 variety of fig caUed the goat-fig which never ripens, 

 but bestows on another tree what it has not got itself, 

 since it is a natural sequence of causation, just as 

 from things that decay something is generated. 

 Consequently this fig engenders gnats ^ which, 

 being cheated out of nutriment in their mother tree, 

 fly away from its decaying rottenness to the 

 kindred tree,*^ and by repeatedly nibbHng at the figs 

 — that is by feeding on them too greedily^ — they 

 open their orifices and so make a way into them, 

 bringing with them the sun into the fruit for the first 

 time and introducing the fertiHzing air through the 

 passages thus opened. Then they consume the 

 milky juice — this is the symptom of the fruit's 

 infancy * — which also dries up of its own accord ; and 



343 



