“At first, the pleasantness of such places was apt to allure the people, and to beget in them a love for the religious worship which was paid there; especially in hot countries, where nothing is more delightful and refreshing than cool shades; for which cause the sacred groves consisted of tall and beautiful trees, rather than such as yield fruit. Hence Cyril does expressly distinguish the tree fit for groves from that which bears fruit, it being the custom to plant groves, not with vines or fig trees, or others which produced fruit, but only with trees which afford no fruit for human use, merely for the sake of pleasure. Thus one of the temples of Diana is described by Herodotus as standing within a grove of the largest trees. And the way to Mercury’s temple was set up on both sides with trees reaching up to heaven, as we are told by the same historian. The same is farther confirmed by the descriptions of groves which remain in the ancient poets.
“Secondly, the solitude of groves was thought very fit to create a religious awe and reverence in the minds of the people. Thus we are told by Pliny, that in groves, ipsa silentia adoramus, the very silence of the place becomes the object of our adoration. Seneca also observes, that when we come into such places, illa proceritas sylvæ, et secretum loci, et admiratio umbræ, fidem numinis facit, the height of the trees, the solitude and secrecy of the place, and the horror which the shade strikes into us, does possess us with an opinion that some deity inhabits there.
“It may not be impertinent to add one testimony more from Ovid, who speaks thus:
‘A darksome grove of oak was spread out near,
Whose gloom impressive told, A God dwells here.’
“Thirdly, some are of opinion that groves derived their religion from the primitive ages of men, who lived in such places before the building of houses. Thus Tacitus reports of the ancient Germans, that they had no other defence for their infants against wild beasts or the weather than what was afforded ramorum nexu, by boughs of trees compacted together. All other nations lived at first in the same manner; which was derived from Paradise, the seat of the first parents of mankind. And it is not unworthy of observation, that most of the ceremonies used in religion were first taken from the customs of human life....
“In latter ages, when cities began to be filled with people, and men to delight in magnificent edifices and costly ornaments, more than the country and primitive way of living, groves by degrees came into disuse. Yet such of the groves as remained from former times were still held in great veneration, and reverenced the more for the sake of their antiquity. As in the earlier times it was accounted an act of sacrilege to cut down any of the consecrated trees, which appears from the punishment inflicted by Ceres upon Erichthonius for this crime, whereof there is a prolix relation in Callimachus; so in latter ages, the same was thought a most grievous wickedness; whereof it will be sufficient to mention this one example, where Lucan speaks of Cæsar’s servants, in allusion to the fable of Lycurgus, who endeavouring to destroy the vines of Bacchus, cut off his own legs:
‘But valiant hands
Then falter’d. Such the reverend majesty
That wrapt the gloomy spot, they feared the axe
That struck those hallow’d trees would from the stroke
Recoil upon themselves.’—Elton.”
Ouseley proceeds—“The trunk or stump of a single tree afforded most obvious materials for a bust or statue; and even unfashioned by human art, became on some occasions an object of idolatrous worship, whilst any rude flat stone, or heap of earth at its base, served as an altar, and the surrounding grove as a temple. That groves in ancient times were considered as temples we learn from Pliny. Treating of the respect paid to trees, he says that they were formerly Temples of the Gods, and that even in his time the rustics, observing ancient usage, dedicated to the Deity any tree of pre-eminent beauty or excellence. There is authority for believing that images were placed in groves sooner than within the walls of religious edifices; also that in the formation of statues, wood was employed before stone or marble, as appears from Pausanias, and is declared by many antiquaries, as for instance Caylus, Winkelmann, and Ernesti.
“That various trees were consecrated, each to a particular divinity, we know from numerous passages so familiar to every classical reader, that I need scarcely quote on this subject Virgil and Pliny. The statue of each god was often (perhaps generally though not necessarily), made from the tree esteemed sacred to him. But I shall not here trace the idol worshipped while yet merely a rude trunk or stock, and in that state called Sanis, through the Xoanon, when the wood was pared or shaven until it became a Deikelon or Bretas, having assumed a likeness, however faint, of the human form. This progress has been described by several writers on the Religion and Arts of Greece, such as Vossius, Gronovius, Grænius and Spence, as well as those already mentioned.
“But it must not be here forgotton that as votive offerings, or as tokens of veneration, wreaths and fillets, and chaplets or garlands were often suspended from the sacred branches; a more elegant and far more innocent form of homage to a Divinity than (as among some nations) the staining of trees with blood which had just flowed from the expiring victim, not unfrequently human.