310 
PLmY S NATURAL HISTOKT. 
[Book xv: 
to our walls." It was immediately after this occurrence that 
the third Panic war commenced, in which Carthage was 
destroyed, though Cato had breathed his last, the year after this 
event. In this trait which are we the most to admire ? was it 
ingenuity^^ and foresight on his part, or was it an accident that 
was thus aptly turned to advantage ? which, too, is the most 
surprising, the extraordinary quickness of the passage which 
must have been made, or the bold daring of the man ? The 
thing, however, that is the most astonishing of all — indeed, I 
can conceive nothing more truly marvellous — is the fact that a 
city thus mighty, the rival of Eome for the sovereignty of the 
world during a period of one hundred and twenty years, owed 
its fall at last to an illustration drawn from a single fig ! 
Thus did this fig effect that which neither Trebia nor Thrasi- 
menus, not Cannse itself, graced with the entombment of the 
E-oman renown, not the Punic camp entrenched within three 
miles of the city, not even the disgrace of seeing Hannibal 
riding up to the Colline Gate, could suggest the means of 
accomplishing. It Was left for a fig, in the hand of Cato, to 
show how near was Carthage to the gates of Eome ! 
In the Porum even, and in the very midst of the Comitium"^^ 
of Eome, a fig-tree is carefully cultivated, in memory of the 
consecration which took place on the occasion of a thunder- 
bolt^^ which once fell on that spot ; and still more, as a me- 
morial of the fig-tree which in former days overshadowed 
Eomulus and Eemus, the founders of our empire, in the Lu- 
percal Cave. This tree received the name of ruminalis," 
from the circumstance that under it the wolf was found giving 
the breast — rumis it was called in those days — to the two 
infants. A group in bronze was afterwards erected to con- 
secrate the remembrance of this miraculous event, as, through 
the agency of Attus N" avius the augur, the tree itself had 
eluded both days in the computation; the one they dated /rom, and the 
day of^ the event. 
'^^ In sending for the fig, and thinking of this method of speaking to 
the feehngs of his fellow-countrymen. 
^•^ A place in the Forum, where public meetings were held, and certain 
offences tried. 
^1 He alludes to the Puteal, or enclosed space in the Forum, consecrated 
by Scribonius Libo, in consequence of the spot having been struck by 
lightning. 
