334 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK IV. But to return to tlie superstitions we were speaking of. They were 

 '^•^'Y'^ utterly abolished under the reign of Claudius, as appears by Suetonius ; 



and yet, by Tacitus, they continued here in Britain till Nero; and in Gaul 

 till Vitellius, as is found by St. Gregory writing to Q. Brunehaut, about 

 the prohibiting the sacrifices and worship which they paid to trees ; 

 which, Sir James Ware affirms, continued in Ireland till Christianity 

 came in. 



From these silvan philosophers and divines (not to speak much of the 

 Indian Brachmans, or ancient gymnosophists) it is believed that the great 

 Pythagoras might institute his silent monastery ; and we read that Plato 

 entertained his auditors amongst his walks of trees, which were- after- 

 ward defaced by the inhumanity of Sylla, when, as Appian tells us, he cut 

 down those venerable shades to build forts against the Pyrseus. Another 

 we find he had, planted near Anicerides with his own hands, wherein 

 grew that celebrated Platanus, under which he introduces his master 

 Socrates discoursing with Phsedrus de Pulchro. Such another place was 

 the Athenian Cephisia, as A. Gellius describes it. We have already men- 

 tioned the stately Xysta, with their shades, in book ii. c. iii. Democritus 

 also taught in a grove, as we find in that of Hippocrates to Damagetus, 

 where there was a particular tree designed ad otium literarum : and I re- 

 member TertuUian calls these places studia opaca. Under such shades 

 and walks was at first the famous Academia, so venerable, as it was 

 esteemed by the old philosophers profane so much as to laugh in it. 

 See Laertius, jElian, &:c. I could here tell you of Palsemon, Timon, 

 Apollonius, Theophrastus, and many more, that erected their schools 

 in such colleges of trees, but I spare my reader ; I shall only note, that 

 it is reported of Thucydides that he compiled his noble History in the 

 Scaplan groves, as Pliny writes ; and in that matchless piece of Cicero, 

 de Oratore, we shall find the interlocutors to be often under the Pla- 

 tanus in his Tusculan villa, where, invited by the freshness and sweet- 

 ness of the place, Admonuit (says one of them) me hcec tua Platanus 

 qucB non minus ad opacandum hunc locum patulis est diffusa ramis, quam 

 ilia, cujus umhram secutus est Socrates, quce miki videtur non tarn ipsa 

 aquila, qucB describitur, quam Platonis oratione crevisse, d^c. as the orator 

 brings it in, in the person of one of that meeting. 



• See this 

 most elegant- 



i^cl'^^epltie I confess Quintilian seems much to question whether such places do 

 hL brother! '° Hot ratlicr pcrturb and distract from an orator's * recollection and the 



