"In latter ages, when cities began to be filled with people, and men to delight in magnificent edifices and costly ornaments, more than the country and primitive way of living, groves by degrees came into disuse. Yet such of the groves as remained from former times were still held in great veneration, and reverenced the more for the sake of their antiquity. As in the earlier times it was accounted an act of sacrilege to cut down any of the consecrated trees, which appears from the punishment inflicted by Ceres upon Erichthonius for this crime, whereof there is a prolix relation in Callimachus; so in latter ages, the same was thought a most grievous wickedness; whereof it will be sufficient to mention this one example, where Lucan speaks of Cæsar's servants, in allusion to the fable of Lycurgus, who endeavouring to destroy the vines of Bacchus, cut off his own legs: 'But valiant hands Then falter'd. Such the reverend majesty That wrapt the gloomy spot, they feared the axe That struck those hallow'd trees would from the stroke Recoil upon themselves.'--ELTON." Ouseley proceeds--"The trunk or stump of a single tree afforded most obvious materials for a bust or statue; and even unfashioned by human art, became on some occasions an object of idolatrous worship, whilst any rude flat stone, or heap of earth at its base, served as an altar, and the surrounding grove as a temple. That groves in ancient times were considered as temples we learn from Pliny. Treating of the respect paid to trees, he says that they were formerly Temples of the Gods, and that even in his time the rustics, observing ancient usage, dedicated to the Deity any tree of pre-eminent beauty or excellence. There is authority for believing that images were placed in groves sooner than within the walls of religious edifices; also that in the formation of statues, wood was employed before stone or marble, as appears from Pausanias, and is declared by many antiquaries, as for instance Caylus, Winkelmann, and Ernesti. "That various trees were consecrated, each to a particular divinity, we know from numerous passages so familiar to every classical reader, that I need scarcely quote on this subject Virgil and Pliny. The statue of each god was often (perhaps generally though not necessarily), made from the tree esteemed sacred to him. But I shall not here trace the idol worshipped while yet merely a rude trunk or stock, and in that state called Sanis, through the Xoanon, when the wood was pared or shaven until it became a Deikelon or Bretas, having assumed a likeness, however faint, of the human form. This progress has been described by several writers on the Religion and Arts of Greece, such as Vossius, Gronovius, Grænius and Spence, as well as those already mentioned.