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Why do they give a chaplet of oak leaves to
the man who has saved the life of a citizen in time of
war?1
Is it because it is easy to find an abundance of oak
leaves everywhere on a campaign?
Or is it because the chaplet is sacred to Jupiter
and Juno, whom they regard as guardians of the
city?
Or is the custom an ancient inheritance from the
Arcadians, who have a certain kinship with the oak?
For they are thought to have been the first men
sprung from the earth, even as the oak was the first
plant.
1 Cf. Life of Coriolanus, chap. iii. (214 e-f); Pliny, Natural History, xvi. 4 (11-14); Polybius, vi. 39. 6; Aulus Gellius, v. 6.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. 4.
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