Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil 



those mountains is the Corsican pine (Pinus Laricio), 

 easily distinguished, as Veitch says, ' by its strict, 

 erect habit, by its shortened branches, which some- 

 times show a tendency to curve in a direction round 

 the tree and upwards, and by its large, twisted, glau- 

 cous foliage.' 



Naryx is a town of the Opuntian Locri in Greece, 

 of which people the Italian city of Locri was held to 

 be a colony, and it is to the Italian city that Virgil 

 refers. It lies under the great range of Sila, which 

 he makes the scene of the fight of bulls (Ae. 

 xii. 715, sqq.). Doubtless pitch was largely exported 

 from Locri to other parts of Italy. Farmers did not 

 usually make their own pitch, few of them having 

 trees at hand, but bought it in the market towns and 

 melted it into tar (Ge. i. 225). It was used, as with 

 us, for a preservative of timber, for an ingredient in 

 a sheep-wash (Ge. iii. 450), and for marking corn- 

 sacks (Ge. ii. 263). It was also smeared on the 

 corks of wine-jars, as we put wax on the corks of 

 bottles. Nowadays in the Apennines the wine that 

 is kept for domestic use is often put into bottles. 

 These stand upright, and, instead of corks and tar, 

 a few drops of oil are put on the top. When the 

 wine is to be drunk the oil is sucked up by means of 

 a little cotton-wool. 



The tree was well fitted to make a funeral pyre, 

 but when in our first passage Virgil makes Aeneas 

 employ it for the cremation of Misenus he must 

 have forgotten that the tree did not grow near the 

 sea-level. 



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