the Qiiercus and Fagus of the Ancients. 17 



As appertaining to the present enquiry, their words convey some interesting 

 facts. After the cakes of barley and wheat flour, which his citizens are to pre- 

 pare for their repasts, Socrates enumerates several salubrious and quiet articles 

 of food, not very much to the relish of all his hearers, and concludes by re- 

 commending that, with their moderate potations, they should " roast in the 

 ashes the (prjyoiic" i. e. fruit of the Phegos. " Kal <pr]yove <nrodiov<ri 7rpoc to 

 Trvp, jiETplwQ vTrcnrivovres" (Plato de Rejmb., ii.) In Theocritus (Idyl. ix. 15.), 

 Menalcas, " the son of Etna," a person possessed of considerable flocks of 

 sheep and goats, extols, in jo}'ous verses, the happy life of a shepherd, housed 

 safely in his mountain cave against the blasts of winter : — 



" Etna 's my parent ! There I love to dwell, 

 Where the rock mountains form an ample cell ; 

 And there, with affluence blest, as great 1 live 

 As swains can wish, or golden slumbers give. 

 By me large flocks of goats and sheep are fed, 

 Their wool my pillow, and their skins my bed." 



Fawkes's Translation. 

 He then adds : In the winter season, " the meats boil over the oak fire, in 

 the fire the dry fayol" are roasted. 



7 Ev Trvpl Kal dpvivtg %($p'« Z,il, bv Trvpl 5 avcu 

 $>ayoi. 

 In these passages, it is impossible not to perceive that no other fruit than 

 that of the sweet chestnut can be meant ; and, if the Greek <pr]ydc, or, as we 

 have it in the broader dialect of Theocritus, the (payor,, is admitted to mean 

 the chestnut, it follows that the Latin derivative Fagus ought to havethe 

 same signification. Homer, Hesiod, and Theocritus were, beyond all other 

 poets, the objects of Virgil's imitation • and we may, with much confidence, 

 expect to find the same meaning conveyed by his Fagus that wa have, I 

 think, discovered to belong to their Phegos. If we examine Vir. il's allu- 

 sions to the Fagus, we shall not perceive, in any one instance where the 

 word occurs, an objection to its being translated as the chestnut. Thus, for 

 example, in the 3d Georgic, the words " faginus axis" describe the axletree 

 of a chariot,* an evident translation of the tyqyivoc d^ojv of Homer (II., i. 

 838.). Homer clearly does not mean that the axle was made of beech wood, 

 for the 6%v>] is his beech ; nor would either poet have selected so brittle a 

 material as the beech for a chariot entrusted with the safetj' of heroes, and 

 destined to endure the violent concussions of battle or the Olympic games. 

 " Faciiis," says Pliny, " est Fagus, sed fragilis et tener." (N. H., xvi. 84.) 

 His Fagus, therefore, could scarcely be the Fagus of Virgil. The carved 

 goblets, the monuments of the skill of the " divine Alcimedon," are stated to 

 have been "fagina pocula " (Eel. iii. 37.) ; it is scarcely possible to suppose 

 that the gifted artist would have confided the treasures of his skill to a wood 

 so apt to split and spoil as the beech ; for, although it may be applied, in Eng- 

 land, to the formation of bowls for the commonest household purposes, we 

 well know, to our cost, the extreme frailness of the material. Virgil, as it has 

 been frequently remarked, has exercised a very felicitous choice in the epithets 

 he applies to the Fagus, each being so applicable to the beech. Some of these, 

 however, (such as densas, umbrosa, veteres, and alta,) may be passed over, 

 as the common property of almost any species of tree ; but palulce, the 

 famous " Tityre, tu patulce recubans sub tegmine fagi," in spite of all our 

 earliest prejudices, is even more applicable to the chestnut than to the beech. 

 Of the beech Mr. Loudon remarks (Arbor., 1954 and 1970.), that the branches, 

 with certain exceptions, generally take an upright direction • while the chest- 

 nut resembles in its growth, although it cannot equal, the majestic diffusion of 

 the oak. " The branches form nearly the same angle with the trunk, as those 

 of the oak." (Arbor., 1985.) We must, however, pause a moment to con- 

 sider one very characteristic peculiarity, the smoothness of the bark of the beech. 

 Vol. XV. — No. 103. * c 



