OF FOREST-TREES. 355 



At talibus alma sacerdos BOOK IV. 



Puniceo canas stamine vincta comas : 

 Parce oculis, hospes, lucoque abscede verendo. 



Cede agedum, et tuta limina linque fuga. 

 Interdicta viris metaenda lege piatiir, 



Quae se summota vindicat ara casa. 



Di tibi dent alios fontes PR opert. 1. iv. 



The priestess said. 



(A purple fillet bound her hoary head,) 

 Stranger, pry not, but quit this shady seat : 

 Avant, and while thou safely mayst, retreat. 

 To men forbid, and by hard sanction bound : 

 Far better other springs were by thee found. 



Nor, indeed, was it lawful to hunt in such places, unless it were to kill for 

 sacrifice, as we read in Arrianus ; whence it is reported by Strabo, that in 

 the -^tolian groves, sacred to Diana, the beasts were so tame, that the 

 very wolves and stags fed together like lambs, and would follow a man 

 licking his hands, and fawning on him. ' Such a grove was the Crotonian, 

 in which Livy writes, there was a spacious field stored with all sorts of 

 game. There were many forests consecrated to Jupiter, Juno, and Apollo; 

 especially the famous Epidaphne, near the Syrian An tioc/i, which was most 

 incomparably pleasant, and adorned with fountains and rare statues. 

 * There was to be seen the Laurel which had been his chaste mistress, * see this de- 

 and in the centre of it his temple, an asijlum : here it was that Cosroes elegantly ^ de! 

 and Julian did sacrifice upon several occasions, as Eusehius relates, but chrysostom, ^* 

 could not with all their impious arts obtain an answer, because the holy byi. ''tom. 

 Bahylas had been interred near that oracle ; for which it was reputed so sozom". lib. vi. 

 venerable, that there remained an express title in the code, de Cupressis Niceph!*iib. 

 ex luco Daphnes non excidendis velvenundandis, " that none should either '^^^^ 

 fell or sell any of the trees about it ;" which may serve for another instance 

 of their burying in such places. The truth is, so exceedingly superstitious 

 they were, and tender, that there was almost no meddling with these de- 

 voted trees; and even before they did but conlucare or prune one of them, 

 they were first to sacrifice, lest they might offend in something ignorantly : 

 but to cut down was capital, and never to be done away with any offering 

 whatsoever ; and therefore, conlucare in authors is not (as some pretend) 

 succidere, but to prune the branches only ; and yet even this gentle ton- 

 sure of superfluities was reputed a kind of contamination, unless in the 

 case of lightning, when coelo tacta, a whole tree might (juite be felled, <^''- p""- 



X. 



xxvni. 



