Chap. 30.] 
CITEUS TABLES. 
197 
more : it is quite surprising how greatly it loses in weight by 
this process. Shipwrecks have recently taught us also that this 
wood is dried by the action of sea-water, and that it thereby 
acquires a hardness and a degree of density which render it 
proof against corruption : no other method is equally sure to 
produce these results. These tables are kept best, and shine 
with the greatest lustre, when rubbed with the dry hand, 
more particularly just after bathing. As if this wood had 
been created for the behoof of wine, it receives no injury 
from it. 
(16.) As this tree is one among the elements of more civil- 
ized life, I think that it is as well on the present occasion to 
dwell a little further upon it. It was known to Homer even, 
and in the Greek it is known by the name of thyon,'^^^ or 
sometimes "thya.'* He says that the wood of this tree was 
among the unguents that were burnt for their pleasant odour 
by Circe,^* whom he would represent as being a goddess ; a 
circumstance which shows the great mistake committed by 
those who suppose that perfumes are meant under that name,^^* 
seeing that in the very same line he says that cedar and larch 
were burnt along with this wood, a thing that clearly proves 
that it is only of different trees that he is speaking. Theo- 
phrastus, an author who wrote in the age succeeding that of 
Alexander the Great, and about the year of the City of Eome 
440, has awarded a very high rank to this tree, stating that it 
is related that the raftering of the ancient temples used to be 
made of this wood, and that the timber, when employed in 
roofs, will last for ever, so to say, being proof against all de- 
cay, — quite incorruptible, in fact. He also says that there i3 
nothing more full of wavy veins than the root of this tree, and 
that there is no workmanship in existence more precious than 
that made of this material. The finest kind of citrus grows, 
he says, in the vicinity of the Temple of Jupiter Hammon \ 
he states also that it is produced in the lower part of Cyre- 
naica. He has made no mention, however, of the tables that 
are made of it ; indeed, we have no more ancient accounts of 
^2 Fee remarks that this is incorrect, and that this statement betrays an 
entire ignorance of the vegetable physiology. 
6^ Gvov, " wood of sacrifice." 
Od. B. V. I. 60. Pliny makes a mistake in saying " Circe it should 
be " Calypso. 
^* eiov. ^« Crispins, 
