PROCEEDINGS OF THE HORTICULTTJRAL ASSOCIATION. 677 



Requires a depth of lodging in the ground, 



And next the lower skies a bed profound, 



High ns his topmost boughs ascend. 



So low his roots to hell's dominion tend; 



Therefore, nor winds, nor winter's rage, o'erthrows 



His bulky body, but unmoved he grows. 



For length of ages lasts his happy reign, 



And lives of mortal men contend in vain; 



Full in the midst of his own strength he stands. 



Stretching his brawnj' arms, and leafy hands; 



His shade commands the plains, his head the hills commands." 



An^ also in the -^neid he says: 



*' As when the winds their airy quarrel try. 

 Jostling from every quarter of the sky, 

 This way and that, the mountain oak they bend. 

 His boughs they shatter and his branches rend; 

 With leaves and fulling mast they strew the ground, 

 The hollow valleys echo to the sound ; 

 Unmoved the royal plant their fury mocks. 

 Or shaken clings more closely to the rocks; 

 For as he shoots bis towering head on high. 

 So deep in earth his fixed foundations lie." 



The civic crown of the Romans was made of the oak, and was especially 

 bestowed upon those who had been instrumental in saving the life of a 

 Roman citizen. 



Lucan alludes to this in his Pharsalia: 



" Straight Lelius from amidst the rest stood forth, 

 An old centurion of distinguished worth; 

 An oaken wreath his hardy temples bore, 

 \ Mark of a citizen preserved he wore." « 



Shakspcare, in his play of Coriolanus, also notices this custom. In the 

 second scene of the second act, Cominius, in describing the merita of 

 Coriolanus, says: 



" At sixteen years 



When Tarquin made a head from Rome, he fought 

 Beyond the mark of others; our then dictator. 

 Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight, 

 When with his Amazonian chin he drove 

 The bristled lips before him; he bestrid. 

 An o"erpressed Roman, and in the Consul's view 

 Slew three opposers; Tarquin'g self he met. 

 And struck him on his knee; in that day's feats 

 When he might act the woman in the scene. 

 He proved best man i' the field, and for his meed 

 Was brow bound with the oak." 



Sophocles also describes Hecate as crowned with oak leaves and ser- 

 pents. Socrates swore by the oak, as did the women of Priene, a town in 

 Ionia. To say " I speak by the oak," was a most solemn form of assevera- 

 tion among the Greeks, on account of the sacredness of the tree. To be 

 born of an oak was a form of speech applied to a foundling, it being cus- 

 tomary for the poor to expose their children in the hollow of an oak tree 

 when they could no longer support them, thus putting them under the 

 immediate and direct charge of Jupiter or the Gods. 



Boughs of oak with acorns were carried in marriage ceremonies as 

 emblems of fecundity. They were also used in the Eleusinian mysteries. 



