The sacred tree was the pledge of the presence and favour of the god, and on it therefore depended the prosperity of the family, tribe, or State which worshipped it. Such belief is seen in reference to the fig tree in the Roman forum, or the olive in the Acropolis at Athens; and when the latter put forth a new shoot after the burning of the city by the Persians, the people knew that the safety of the city was assured. A piece of the sacred tree was a pledge of security to the Argo and to the fleet of Aineas (Zn. ix.'92). The fate of Megara depended on an olive tree (Plin. HN xvi. 72).
The tree, then, was on earth the embodiment or the home of Divine life ; and the life of man in some forms of belief was connected with a tree during his earthly existence and passed into it at his death, Like the gods, men are often said to be born from trees. Hesiod’s third race of men were born from ash trees, and Meleager’s life de- pended on a piece of wood. Ares was born from Hera and a plant (see below, § VI (2)). Talos and Adonis were born from trees. Most instructive are the cases in which the tree is said to have grown out of the hero’s grave. Such was the plane tree on the tomb of Amycus in Bithynia : Amycus had opposed and fought with all strangers; and if any part of his tree was taken on board a ship, there ensued constant quarrelling, until his influ- ence was got rid of by throwing away the bough. Here the tree is evidently the embodiment of the spirit of the dead person. There was generally a fountain beside the tree, as at Dodona and Aulis.
Moreover, transformation into a tree was equiva- lent to translation to the company of the gods: and the tree became then a sacred pledge for posterity, the prototype of the later hero-chapel. The plants and trees which grew on the grave were the life of the buried human being. Phemonoe, the first Pythia, foretold that from her dead body would spring herbs which would give to animals that ate hein the power of showing the future by the state of their entrails. Thus she would live on with men. And, similarly, the plants on graves made a connexion between the deceased and this world : an Athenian law (Ael. Var. Hist. 5. 17) punished with death any one who cut a holm-oak growing ina sepulchral ground (heroon). From this sprung the later custom of planting gardens in cemeteries, Many passages in literature allude to the sympathy between the dead man and the trees or plants on his grave. On that of Protesilaus grew plane trees, whose twigs pointed towards Troy, and whose leaves fell sooner than those of any tree around.
The belief in holy trees has lasted, probably un- broken, in Anatolia through Christian times down
* Theocr. xviii. 45. + Pliny, HW xv. 20, 77. ays wee ¥ See also Paus, x.5. 4; Persius, i. 39; Propertius, iv. 5. 1, 73.
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114. ~~ RELIGION OF GREECE
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RELIGION OF GREECE
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to the present day. In the Acta of St. Philetzrus* a grove of tall cypress trees at a place in Mysia called Poketos, on the road from Nicza and the Rhyndacus to Cyzicus, is mentioned as the chief seat of local pagan rites in the 4th cent. ; the refer- ence probably proves that the grove existed or was still remembered when the Acta, a late composition but embodying a real local tradition, took form. An inscription of Sandal (Satala in the Lydian Katakekaumene) mentions the punishment in- flicted in the form of disease by the gods Sabazios and Anaitis Artemis on a man who had cut their trees; and the Mohammedans still believe that disease will afflict any one who cuts the trees on a neighbouring hillock.t Sacred trees were hung with garlands, just as at the present day rags and scraps of garments are tied by Mohammedans to sacred trees in many parts of Asia Minor, though this practice is not in accordance with the spirit or the rules of their religion.
The veneration of the sacred tree or grove evidently implies the idea that the tree is an embodiment of the Divine life and power, and that he who maltreats the tree injures the Divinity that lives in the tree. At the same time, the utilitarian element also entered here, for the be- lief protects and safeguards the interests of men, or their deep feelings of respect for the dead. The trees beside a village were useful to its popula- tion, or they were sentinels keeping watch over the grave of the dead. The worshippers of the Divine power ornament the tree in which that power is manifested with garlands, or with small representations of the power in some of its mani- festations: and out of the Jatter custom, through growing religious degeneration, springs the legend that some hero (connected with, sometimes a mere impersonation of, the Divinity) has been suspended from the tree, as Marsyas from the plane near Celene in Phrygia, or Helena from the plane at Sparta (Paus. ii. 19. 10; Theoc. 18, 48).
Ill. SAcRED ANIMALS.—That various animals had some religious awe attached to them in early Greek and Anatolian religion is well known ; but the nature and real meaning of this awe are far from certain. No branch of our subject is more obscure than this; and in none are so many wild and vague statements and such mixture of ideas current.