§ 12.5.1 Famous plane-frees are: (1) one that grew in the walks of the Academy at Athens, the roots of which were 50 feet long and spread wider than the branches (2) at the present day there is a celebrated plane in Lycia, allied with the amenity of a cool spring it stands by the roadside like a dwelling-house with a hollow cavity inside it 81 feet across, forming with its summit a shady grove, and shielding itself with vast branches as big as trees and covering the fields with its long shadows, and so as to complete its resemblance to a grotto, embracing inside it mossy pumice-stones in a circular rim of rock - a tree so worthy to be deemed a marvel that Licinius Mucianus, who was three times consul and recently lieutenant-governor of the province, thought it worth handing down to posterity also that he had held a banquet with eighteen members of his retinue inside the tree, which itself provided couches of leafage on a bounteous scale, and that he had then gone to bed in the same tree, shielded from every breath of wind, and receiving more delight from the agreeable sound of the rain dropping through the foliage than gleaming marble, painted decorations or gilded panelling could have afforded. It is stated that the Gauls, imprisoned as they were by the Alps as by a then insuperable bulwark, first found a motive for overflowing into Italy from the circumstance that a Gallic citizen from Switzerland named Helico, who had sojourned at Rome on account of his skill as an artificer, had brought with him when he came back some dried figs and grapes and some samples of oil and wine and consequently we may pardon them for having sought to obtain these things even by means of war. We use a tree to furrow the seas and to bring the lands nearer together, we use a tree for building houses even the images of the deities were made from trees, before men had yet thought of paying a price for the corpses of huge animals, or arranged that inasmuch as the privilege of luxury had originated from the gods, we should behold the countenances of the deities and the legs of our tables made of the same ivory. Moreover, there are a thousand other uses for those trees which are indispensable for carrying on life. Subsequently it was the trees with juices more succulent than corn that gave mellowness to man for from frees are obtained olive oil to refresh the limbs and draughts of wine to restore the strength, and in fine all the savours that come by the spontaneous generosity of the year, and the fruits that are even now served as a second course, in spite of the fact that battle must be waged with the wild beasts to obtain them and that fishes fattened on the corpses of shipwrecked mariners are in demand.
The different kinds of trees are kept perpetually dedicated to their own divinities, for instance, the winter-oak to Jove, the bay to Apollo, the olive to Minerva, the myrtle to Venus, the poplar to Hercules nay, more, we also believe that the Silvani and Fauns and various kinds of goddesses are as it were assigned to the forests from heaven and as their own special divinities. § 12.2.1 Once upon a time trees were the temples of the deities, and in conformity with primitive ritual simple country places even now dedicate a tree of exceptional height to a god nor do we pay greater worship to images shining with gold and ivory than to the forests and to the very silences that they contain.
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