The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-05-24
A Famous Cypress Tree.

lBostOn Traveller.
curious paragra oh is going the rounds, to
the effect that a famous cypress-tree, which
stood near Sparta more than $500 years ago,
and was described by Pausanias more than
four centuries before Christ, or about twenty
three centuries ago, had been destroyed by
gypsies, who camped under it, and left their
fire burning, which extended to the tree and
reduced it to ashes. Now, as it is a we'll es.
tabished fact that Pausanias was alive almost
two centuries after the Saviours birth, it is not
easy to believe tha. he could have written of
the said tree more than six centuries earlier
The exact time of the death ot Pausanias, as
we'll as the exact time of his birth is unknown,
but it is certain that he was writing as late as
the close of the third quarter of the second
century of the Christian era,-that is to say,
A. d. 175. That was in the reign of Marcus
Aurelios, when the Antonines were
coming TO close, about seventeen
centuries ago. If he were engaged in
literary work when the Roman empire was
well nigh go years old-reckoning from the
time that Julius Caesar had established his
power he must have been well along in his
seventh century, supposing him to have writ
ten of the Spartan cypress-tree four centuries
before the birth of Our Lord and altogether
the most remarkable specimen of the oldest in-
habitant ever known, and much ahead of the
Wandering jew, though the latter finally got
ahead of him and has Kept the place he gained.
Were an author now living who was born
when the obtaining of the Magma Charta was
remembered as recent event-Magna Charta
dates from A. d. 1215-he would be to us what
Pansanias was to the Romans Of the later Anto-
r,st,tax . ~. VA..
really wrote of the old Spartan tree in the
days OF Lysander. So we think that Pausanais
must be given up as an authority of a personal
kind for anything that belongs TO the ante
Christian period Gibbon makes some small
use of Pausanias. and his great work opens
with the reign of Commodus, who was the
son of Marcus Aurelius. AS to the Spartan
cypress-:ree we must confess to little skepti-
cism as to the age given to it. We are aware
that the cypress is long lived tree and famous
Tor longevity; but 1t is n poser when we are |
told of particular tree that lasted, III spite of
blasting winds and mans yet more blasting |
destructiveness, for twenty y-eght centuries, aud |
then had an accidental death, caused
by the needless use OF so destructive |
apower as fire. The Oldest cypress-tree that we |
can call to mind-and the age OF which APP
proaches, II 1t does not actually come up to the |
figures 1850 years-grows somewhere in North |
ern Italy. 1t saw the first Roman Caesar come |
in, one of its earliest recollections and it saw |
=
of its latest recolectons. 1t was tree Of re-
spectacle years when Pope Peter commenced |
his Roman career, and IL is tree of more than |
respectable centuries in the Pontiticate of Leo |
XIII. 1t was wearily sighing to the breeze in
the early years of the Vsconti, aud it bends
before the wind in these early Savoie- Carigna-
no days. 1t may in its youth have heard the |
first news of Actium, and the caunonade of |
Solferno may have disturbed its leaves. As
the Italian tree is SO ancient, It is possible that
the Spartan tree may have reached to the age |
accorded to it; but it is net easy to comprehend |
how it could have avoided destruction when |
the enemies of Sparta were on her territory. |
The great invasion Of Epaminondas took place |
B. C. 362, and all the country around the Doric |
city was in his hands; and as the Spartans were |
intensely hated by their foes, it is hard to un-
derstand how the tree, which ust have been
"a Spartan landmark, could have escaped fire or
the axe War is fierce consumer of trees, in |
many ways, and Thebans were fierce haters of
Spartans. Ii the tree did then survive, it |
should have lived forever