420 
PLINY'S NATUEAL HISTORY. 
[Book XTI. 
more wonderful than this ship : one hundred and twenty thou- 
sand modii of lentils formed its ballast ; and the length of it 
took up the greater part of the left side of the harbour at Ostia. 
It was sunk at that spot by order of the Emperor Claudius, 
three moles, each as high as a tower, being built upon it; 
they were constructed with cement^^ which the same vessel 
had conveyed from Puteoli. It took the arms of four men to 
span the girth of this tree, and we not unfrequently hear of 
the price of masts for such purposes, as being eighty thousand 
sesterces or more : rafts, too, of this wood are sometimes put 
together, the value of which is forty thousand. In Egypt and 
Syria, it is said, the kings, for want of fir, used to employ 
cedar for building their ships : the largest cedar that we find 
mentioned is said to have come from Cyprus, where it was cut 
to form the mast of a galley of eleven tiers of oars that be- 
longed to Demetrius : it was one hundred and thirty feet in 
length, and took three men to span its girth. The pirates of 
Germany navigate their seas in vessels formed of a single tree 
hollo wed out : some of these will hold as many as thirty 
men. 
Of all woods, the most compact, and consequently the hea- 
viest, are the ebon^^ and the box, both of them of a slender 
make. I^either of these woods will float in water, nor, indeed, 
will that of the cork tree, if the bark is removed ; * the same is 
the case, too, with the wood of the larch. Of the other woods, 
the driest is that of the tree known at Eome as the lotus, 
and next, that of the robur, when the white sap has been re- 
moved. The wood of the robur is dark, and that of the cy- 
tisus^^ still more so, approaching, in fact, the nearest of all to 
the colour of ebony; though there are not wanting writers who 
assert that the wood of the Syrian terebinth is darker.^^ An 
artist of the name of Thericles is highly spoken of for his skill 
in turning goblets from the wood of the terebinth : and, indeed, 
that fact is a proof of the goodness of the wood. Terebinth is 
the only wood that requires to be rubbed with oil, and is im- 
See B. xxxvi. c. 14. This was a mortar made of volcanic ashes, 
which hardened under water. It is now known as Pozzuolane. 
-2 The Pinus cedriis of Linnaeus. 
• 2^ The canoes were formed probably of the fir. 
The Celtis australis of Linnaeus. 
See B. xiii. c 27. 
This, Fee says, is not the case, if the Syrian terebinth is the same as 
the Pistacia terebinthus of LinutEUs. 
