OF FOREST-TREES. 



347 



island, where once stood those famous statues cut by Praxiteles ; another BOOK IV. 

 also in Pontus, where, if you believe it, hung up the golden fleece, meed ^-"""V^ 

 of the bold adventurer. Nor was the watery king Neptune without his 

 groves : the Helicean in Greece was his. So Ceres, and Proserpine, 

 Pluto, Vesta, Castor, and Pollux, had such shady places consecrated 

 to them. Add to these the Lebadian, Arsinoan, Paphian, Senonian, 

 and such as were in general dedicated to all the gods, for 



————— Habitarunt di quoque silvas. 

 ■ Gods have dwelt in groves. 



To the memory of famous men and heroes were consecrated the 

 Achillean, Aglaurin, and those to Bellerophon, Hector, and Alexander ; 

 to others, also, who disdained not to derive their names from trees and fo- 

 rests, as Silvus the posthumous of ^neas, and divers of the Albanian 

 princes and great persons ; Stolon, Laura, Daphnis, &c. And a certain 

 custom there was, for the parents to plant a tree at the birth of an heir or 

 son, presaging by the growth and thriving of the tree, the prosperity of 

 the child : thus we read in the life of Virgil, how far his natalitial 

 Poplar had outstripped the rest of its contemporaries. And the reason, 

 doubtless, of all this, was the general repute of the sanctity of those 

 places ; for no sooner does the poet speak of a grove, but immediately 

 some consecration follows, as believing that out of those shady pro- 

 fundities some deity must needs emerge : 



Quo possis viso dicere numen inest. 



So as Tacitus (speaking of the Germans) says, Lucos et nemora conse- 

 crant, deorumque nominihus appellant secretum illud, quod sold reverentid 

 vident: to the same purpose, Pliny, lib. xii. cap. 1. tells us, arhores 

 fuere numimim templa, in which (says he) they did not so much revere 

 the golden and ivory statues, as the goodly trees and awful silence : 

 and the consecration of these nemorous places, together with the express 

 rites thereof, we find in Quintus Curtius, and in what Paulus Diaconus 

 relates of the Longobards, who not being capable of philosophising on 

 the physical causes, which they deemed supernatural, and plainly divine, 

 were allured, as it is likely, by the gloominess of the shade, procerity and 



