ed; and
having made for it a chamber worthy of it, he setteth it in a wall,
making it fast with iron."[68] Side by side with this foolish
wood-cutter, who "for life beseecheth that which is dead," may be placed
the Sicilian peasant whom Theocritus represents as offering sacrifice to
a carved Pan. "When thou hast turned yonder lane, goatherd, where the
oak-trees are, thou wilt find an image of fig-tree wood newly carven;
three legged it is, the bark still covers it, and it is earless withal.
A right holy precinct runs round it, and a ceaseless stream that falleth
from the rocks on every side is green with laurels and myrtles and
fragrant cypress. And all around the place that child of the grape, the
vine, doth flourish with its tendrils, and the merles in spring with
their sweet songs pour forth their woodnotes wild, and the brown
nightingales reply with their complaints, pouring from their bills their
honey sweet song."[69]

This crude worship of the god in the anthropomorphised tree lingered on
amongst the peasantry side by side with the splendid temple ritual, even
into days when the revelation of a Deity who filled all time and space,
and was worshipped in temples not made with hands, was rapidly
undermining the pagan worship of the cities. Maximus Tyrius, who lived
in the second century A.D., and counted among his most diligent pupils
the great Marcus Aurelius, relates how even in his day at the festival
of Dionysus every peasant selected the most beautiful tree in his garden
to convert it into an image of the god and to worship it.[70] And
Apuleius, another writer of the same period, bears similar testimony.
"It is the custom," he says, "of pious travellers, when their way passes
a grove or holy place, that they offer up a prayer for the fulfilment of
their wishes, offer gifts and remain there a time; so I, when I set foot
in that most sacred city, although in haste, must crave for a pardon,
offer a prayer and moderate my haste. For never was traveller more
justified in making a religious pause, when he perc