Note 136 In the last century twenty large cedars still remained, (Voyage de la Roque, tom. i. p. 68 - 76;) at present they are reduced to four or five, (Volney, tom. i. p. 264.) These trees, so famous in Scripture, were guarded by excommunication: the wood was sparingly borrowed for small crosses, &c.; an annual mass was chanted under their shade; and they were endowed by the Syrians with a sensitive power of erecting their branches to repel the snow, to which Mount Libanus is less faithful than it is painted by Tacitus: inter ardores opacum fidumque nivibus - a daring metaphor, (Hist. v. 6.)]

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The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire —Fall In The East —Chapter 47