Chap. 38.] PIIODIGIES CONlfECTED WITH TREES. 
527 
formed into an olive. In such narratives as these, the book 
written in Greek by Aristander abounds, not to enter any fur- 
ther on so extended a subject ; and we have in Latin the Com- 
mentaries of C. Epidius, in which we find it stated that trees 
have even been known to speak. In the territory of Cumge, a tree, 
and a very ominous presage it was, sank into the earth shortly 
before the civil wars of Pompeius Magnus began, leaving only 
a few of the branches protruding from the ground. The Sibyl- 
line Books were accordingly consulted, and it was found that 
a war of extermination was impending, which would be at- 
tended with greater carnage the nearer it should approach the 
city of Eome. 
Another kind of prodigy, too, is the springing up of a tree 
in some extraordinary and unusual place, the head of a statue, 
for instance, or an altar, or upon another tree even.^^ A fig- 
tree shot forth from a laurel at Cyzicus, just before the siege 
of that city ; and so in like manner, at Tralles, a palm issued 
from the pedestal of the statue of the Dictator Caesar, at the 
period of his civil wars. So, too, at Eome, in the Capitol 
there, in the time of the wars against Perseus, a palm-tree 
grew from the head of the statue of Jupiter, a presage of im- 
pending victory and triumphs. This palm, however, having 
been destroyed by a tempest, a fig-tree sprang up in the very 
same place, at the period of the lustration made by the censors 
M. Messala and C. Cassius,^' a time at which, according to Piso, 
an author of high authority, all sense of shame had been utterly 
banished. Above all the prodigies, however, that have ever 
been heard of, we ought to place the one that was seen in our 
own time, at the period of the fall of the Emperor 'Nero, in the 
territory of Marrucinum ; a plantation of olives, belonging to 
Yectius Marcellus, one of the principal members of the Eques - 
trian order, bodily crossed the public highway, while the fields 
that lay on the opposite side of the road passed over to supply 
the place which had been thus vacated by the olive-yard.^^ 
CHAP. 39. (26.) TREATMENT OP THE DISEASES OF TREES. 
Having set forth the various maladies by which trees «are at- 
tacked, it seems only proper to mention the most appropriate 
32 This may easily be accounted for, by the seed accidentally lodging in 
a crevice of the tree. a. xj. c. 600. 
3i An exaggerated account merely of a land-slip. 
