Chap. 20.] AKECDOTES CONKECTED WITH THE Tia. 
309 
winter fig and the black Telanian''* with a long stalk, you 
must select a richer soil, or else a ground well manured/' 
Since his day there have so many names and kinds come up, 
that even on taking this subject into consideration, it must be 
apparent to every one how great are the changes which have 
taken place in civilized life. 
There are winter figs, too, in some of the provinces, the 
Moesian, for instance ; but they are made so by artificial means, 
such not being in reality their nature. Being a small 
variety of the fig-tree, they cover it up with manure at the end 
of autumn, by which means the fruit on it is overtaken by 
winter while still in a green state : then when the weather 
becomes milder the fruit is uncovered along with the tree, and 
so restored to light. Just as though it had come into birth 
afresh, the fruit imbibes the heat of the new sun with the 
greatest avidity — a different sun, in fact, to that which ori- 
ginally gave it life — and so ripens along with the blossom of 
the coming crop ; thus attaining maturity in a year not its 
own, and this in a country, too, where the greatest cold 
prevails. 
CHAP, 20.— HISTORICAL ANECDOTES COlfNECTED WITH THE FIG. 
^^The mention by Cato of the variety which bears the name 
of the African fig, strongly recalls to my mind a remarkable 
fact connected with it and the country from which it takes 
its name. 
Burning with a mortal hatred to Carthage, anxious, too, for the 
safety of his posterity, and exclaiming at every sitting of the 
senate that Carthage must be destroyed, Cato one day brought 
with him into the Senate-house a ripe fig, the produce of that 
country . Exhibiting it to the assembled senators, I ask you," 
said he, when, do you suppose, this fruit was plucked from the 
tree ?" All being of opinion that it had been but lately gathered, 
— Know then," was his reply, that this fig was plucked at 
Carthage but the day before yesterday^^— so near is the enemy 
The modern " black" fig. 
The sun of the former year. 
^6 In Moesia — the present Servia and Bulgaria. 
6' Another war is said to have originated in this fruit. Xerxes was 
tempted by the fine figs of Athens to undertake the invasion of Greece. 
**Tertium ante diem," In dating from an event, the Eomans in- 
