96 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 
the Deoian oak that stood in the grove sacred to Ceres. 
It is said of this famous oak that it towered above the 
other trees as loftily as the other trees towered above 
the grass, and that it was a woods in itself. When the 
Dryads remonstrated with Erisicthon, he boasted that he 
would fell the tree even if it were the goddess herself. 
While the old oak shuddered at the last stroke given it, 
a voice issued from the trunk, saying: “I, a nymph 
most pleasing to Ceres, am beneath this wood and dying, 
rejoice at the punishment which will be meted out to 
thee.” The goddess destined him to be tortured by 
famine, famine so dire and terrible that he was finally 
compelled to eat portions of his own miserable body 
trying to appease his hunger. In that olden time of 
myths people and nymphs were transformed to trees, 
sometimes at their own requests, but oftener for in some 
manner offending other deities. The Heliads, children 
ofthe sun, were changed to poplars; Altis to a pine; 
the mother of Adonis to a myrrh tree; an Apulion 
shepherd, who mocked the nymphs, was transformed to 
an olive tree, and his tears became bitter berries. The 
fair virgin Daphne, at her own request became a laurel, 
that she might escape from her lover god, Apollo, who 
was in pursuit of her. The beautiful Dryope was trans- 
formed to a lotus tree for unwittingly plucking a blos- 
som from a shrub in which was enshrined the nymph 
Lotus. A juster doom met the Eonian women, who, 
turning to flee after murdering Orpheus, found their 
flight checked by the rapid lengthening of their toes. 
Soon their feet became rooted to the ground, their flesh 
