Turning to classic lore, the references are even more numerous. We have the oak groves of Dodona, in Epirus, the most ancient and celebrated of oracles, whose priests sent out their revelations on its leaves.
Pliny says that the oaks in the forest of Hereynia were believed to be as old as the world, also that oaks existed at the tomb of Ilus near Troy, which had been sown when that city was first called Ilium.
Socrates took oath by the oak; also the women of Priene, a maritime city of Ionia, in matters of importance. On Mount Lycæus, in Arcadia, there was a temple of Jupiter with a fountain, into which the priest threw an oak branch, in times of drought, to produce rain. The Greeks had two remarkable sayings relative to this tree, one of which was the phrase: “I speak to the oak,” as a solemn asseveration; and the other, “born of an oak,” applied to a foundling; because anciently children, when the parents were unable to provide for them, were frequently exposed in the hollow of an oak tree.
So important a position does the oak occupy in the history of the subject we are now discussing, that before dismissing it we feel bound to call attention to some of those mythological allusions to it which have been collected by Loudon for the enrichment of the pages of his admirable “History of the Trees and Shrubs of Britain.”
“The oak was dedicated by the ancients to Jupiter, because it was said that an oak tree sheltered that god at his birth on Mount Lycæus, in Arcadia; and there is scarcely a Greek or Latin poet or prose author, who does not make some allusion to this tree. Herodotus first mentions the sacred forest of Dodona (ii. c. 57.) and relates the traditions he heard respecting it from the priests of Egypt. Two black doves, he says, took their flight from the city of Thebes, one of which flew to the temple of Jupiter Ammon and the other to Dodona, where, with a human voice, it acquainted the inhabitants that Jupiter had consecrated the ground, which would in future give oracles. All the trees in the grove became endowed with the gift of prophecy; and the sacred oaks not only spoke and delivered oracles while in a living state, but, when some of them were cut down to build the ship ‘Argo,’ the beams and masts of that ship frequently spoke and warned the Argonauts of approaching calamities. (See Hom. Ody., xiv.; Lucian, vi., 427; Apoll., Book I., &c.) After giving the account above related, Herodotus adds what he calls the explanation of it. He says that some Phœnician merchants carried off an Egyptian priestess from Thebes into Greece, where she took up her residence in the forest of Dodona, and erected there, at the foot of an old oak, a small temple in honour of Jupiter, whose priestess she had been at Thebes. The town and temple of Dodona are said by others to have been built by Deucalion immediately after the great flood, when, in gratitude for his preservation, he raised a temple to Jupiter, and consecrated the oak grove to his honour. This grove, or rather forest, extended from Dodona to Chaonia, a mountainous district of Epirus, so called from Chaon, son of Priam, who was accidently killed there by his brother Helenus. The forest was, from this, sometimes called the Chaonian Forest; and Jupiter Chaonian Father. (See Virgil, Ovid, &c.) The oracle of Dodona was not only the most celebrated but the richest in Greece, from the offerings made by those who came to it, to enquire into futurity. The prophecies were first delivered by doves which were always kept in the temple, in memory of the fabulous origin assigned to the oracle; but afterwards the answers were delivered by the priestesses; or, according to Suidas, Homer and others, by the oaks themselves: hollow trees no doubt being chosen, in which a priest might conceal himself. During the Thracian war a deputation of Bœotians consulting the oracle, the priestess told them that “if they would meet with success, they must be guilty of an impious action:” when in order to fulfil the oracle, they seized her and burnt her alive. After this the Dodonian oracles were always delivered to the Bœotians by men. The oracular powers of the Dodonian oaks are frequently alluded to, not only by the Greek and Latin poets, but by those of modern times. (See Cowper’s Address to the Yardley Oak and Wordsworth’s Lines to a Spanish Oak.)
“Milo of Croton was a celebrated athlete, whose strength and voracity were so great that it was said he could carry a bullock on his shoulders, kill it with a blow of his fist, and afterwards eat it up in one day. In his old age, Milo attempted to tear up an old oak tree by the roots; but the trunk split and the cleft part uniting, his hands became locked in the body of the tree; and being unable to extricate himself, he was devoured by wild beasts. (Ovid; Strab; Paus.)
“The oak was considered by the ancients as the emblem of hospitality; because when Jupiter and Mercury were travelling in disguise, and arrived at the cottage of Philemon, who was afterwards changed into an oak tree, they were treated with the greatest kindness. Philemon was a poor old man who lived with his wife Baucis in Phrygia, in a miserable cottage, which Jupiter, to reward his hospitality, changed into a magnificient temple, of which he made the old couple priest and priestess, granting them the only request they made to him, viz., to be permitted to die together. Accordingly, when both were grown so old as to wish for death, Jove turned Baucis into a lime tree, and Philemon into an oak; the two trees entwining their branches, and shading for more than a century the magnificent portal of the Phrygian temple.
“The civic crown of the Romans was formed of oak; and it was granted for eminent civil services rendered to the state, the greatest of which was considered to be the saving of the life of a Roman citizen.
“Acorns having been the food of man till Ceres introduced corn, boughs of oak were carried in the Eleusinian mysteries.
“Boughs of oak with acorns were carried in marriage ceremonies, as emblems of fecundity. Sophocles, in the fragment of Rhizotomi, describes Hecates as crowned with oak leaves and serpents. Pliny relates of the oaks on the shores of the Cauchian Sea, that, undermined by the waves and propelled by the winds, they tore off with them vast masses of earth on their interwoven roots, and occasioned the greatest terror to the Romans, whose fleets encountered these floating islands. Of the Hyrcynian forest he says, “These enormous oaks, unaffected by ages and coeval with the world by a destiny almost immortal, exceed all wonder. Omitting other circumstances that might not gain belief, it is well known that hills are raised up by the encounter of the jostling roots; or where the earth may not have followed, that arches, struggling with each other, and elevated to the very branches, are curved as it were into wide gateways, able to admit the passage of whole troops of horse.”