 Zeus-Ammon was vested in an ancient tree ({gerandryon}).[213]
But whatever may have been its origin there is no doubt that the oracle
of Dodona had a long and active career, continuing for close upon two
thousand years. Silius Italicus, towards the end of the first century
A.D., reiterates the statement of Hesiod that the deity at Dodona
occupied a tree;[214] Pausanias a hundred years later found the tree
still green and flourishing,[215] and Philostratos about the same time
saw it adorned with wreaths and sacred fillets, "because, like the
Delphic tripod, it gave forth oracles."[216] A later writer states that
the oracular voices ceased on the felling of the tree by a certain
Illyrian bandit,[217] but there is evidence that the tree and the oracle
were still in existence in the middle of the fourth century A.D. These
ancient testimonies to the importance of the oracle have been
marvellously corroborated by the discovery in the course of recent
excavations of a large number of leaden tablets inscribed with the
questions addressed to the god by his votaries, and dating from 400 B.C.
onwards.[218]

According to classical mythology, the oracular virtue of the famous oak
of Dodona was not only transmitted to its offshoots, but even preserved
in the dead wood after its separation from the tree. Ovid, in relating
the story of the plague of Aegina, tells how Aeacus, standing beneath

  A branching oak, the Sire's own tree, from seed
  Of old Dodona sprung,

calls upon Zeus to repeople his stricken kingdom, and fill his desolate
walls anew with citizens as numerous as the ants at his feet.

                            Not a breath
  Was stirring, but the branches shook, the leaves
  With rustling murmur waved.

Accepting the omen he kisses the sacred tree, falls asleep beneath it,
and wakes to find that the ants have been miraculously changed into men,
the famous Myrmidons.[219] Again, it is related by more than one author
that when the good ship _Argo_ was built, Athena introduced into it by
way of amulet a beam hewn i