Deforestation and Erysichthon
I was startled, when reading an article called "Lucan's Caesar and the Sacred Grove: Deforestation and Enlightenment in Antiquity" that describes the episode of desecration of the sacred grove by Caesar and what it means. Kinda cool article, and some copies will likely be made for a few people. What startled me, though, was that it referenced me to a passage in Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book VIII, lines 738-884, the story of Erysichthon, who cuts down a sacred tree.
Get this: Erysichthon cuts into the sacred tree, and blood flows out "like a fountain from the neck of a great bull, who falls before the altars of the gods."
If there were cranes involved, too, I'd die. Literally, I'd be dead and gone of shock. But there are no cranes, so I'm guessing it's just an interesting, poetic coincidence.
But for a moment, I wondered.
(I think I'm going to suggest this passage for the "piety" and "nature awareness" requirements in the DP. . .)
Before anyone says anything anti-Roman, there's no actual evidence that Caesar destroyed any groves. Just an FYI, because we have a popular tradition in Neo-Paganism saying he did.
Get this: Erysichthon cuts into the sacred tree, and blood flows out "like a fountain from the neck of a great bull, who falls before the altars of the gods."
If there were cranes involved, too, I'd die. Literally, I'd be dead and gone of shock. But there are no cranes, so I'm guessing it's just an interesting, poetic coincidence.
But for a moment, I wondered.
(I think I'm going to suggest this passage for the "piety" and "nature awareness" requirements in the DP. . .)
Before anyone says anything anti-Roman, there's no actual evidence that Caesar destroyed any groves. Just an FYI, because we have a popular tradition in Neo-Paganism saying he did.