BOOK X\'I. Lxxvi. 200-203 



What is believed to have been the largest tree ExcepHon 

 ever seen at Ronic down to the prescnt tinie was "^ies^''^" 

 one that Tiberius Caesar caused to be exhibited 

 as a marvel on the deck of tlie Naval Sham Fight 

 before mentioned ; it had been brought to llome § 190. 

 with the rest of the timber used, and it lasted till 

 the amphitheatre of the emperor Nero." It w^as a 

 log of larchwood, 120 feet long and of a uniform 

 thickness of two feet, from which could be inferred 

 the almost incredible height of the rest of the tree 

 by calculating its length to the top. Within our 

 own memory there was also an equally marvellous 

 tree left by Marcus Agrippa in the porticos of the 

 Voting-booths, left over from the timber used for 

 the ballot office ; this was twenty feet shorter than 

 the one previously mentioned, and 18 inches in 

 thickness. An especially wonderful fir was seen 

 in the ship which brought from Egypt at the order 

 of the emperor Gaius the obelisk erected in the 

 Vatican Circus and four shafts of the same stone to 

 serve as its base. It is certain that nothing more 

 wonderful than this ship has ever been seen on the 

 sea : it carried one hundred and twenty bushels of 

 lentils for ballast, and its length took up a large part 

 of the left side of the harbour of Ostia, for under 

 the emperor Claudius it was sunk there, with three 

 moles as high as towers erected upon it that had been 

 made of PozzuoU cement for the pui*pose and con- 

 veyed to the place. It took four men to span the 

 girth of this tree wuth their arms ; and we commonly 

 hear that masts for those purposes cost 80,000 

 sesterces and more, and that to put together the rafts 

 usually runs to 40,000. But in Egypt and Syria Treesfor 

 for want of fir the kings are said to have used cedar J^^''"*^ 



