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 in the grove of Dodona, which in the subsequent voyage constantly gave the Argonauts warning and advice.[220]