Introduction: Nature in Our Everyday Language
Our everyday vocabulary is deeply rooted in our environment. We frequently rely on metaphors from nature to explain complex situations, speaking of “the calm before the storm,” warning someone that they “can’t see the forest for the trees,” or—to mention one of the English idioms I find most fascinating—”carrying coals to Newcastle” when an action is completely unnecessary or redundant. The ancient Greeks were no different; they commonly advised against pointless endeavours by warning not to “bring owls to Athens” (γλαῦκ’ εἰς Ἀθήνας). However, there is one specific ancient proverb that stands out for its profound and enduring connection to human emotions, identity, and the physical landscape.
In his poignant Consolation to His Wife, the philosopher Plutarch writes to comfort his spouse, Timoxena, following the tragic loss of their two-year-old daughter. The letter is deeply emotional, acknowledging his wife’s fortitude and helping her navigate such profound grief. It is particularly interesting how Plutarch, towards the end of the letter, explains ancient funerary practices for infants, who were not granted standard burials because they had barely “touched the earth” (Plut. Consol. ad uxor. 612a–b). Nevertheless, the expression that sparked my immense curiosity is found right at the beginning of the text. Opening the letter, Plutarch makes a striking confession to assure his wife of his shared vulnerability. He declares that he was not born “from oak or rock” (ἀπὸ δρυὸς οὐδ’ ἀπὸ πέτρης; Plut. Consol. ad uxor. 608c).
But why would a grieving father in antiquity turn to botany and geology to express his heartbreak?
The Philological Mystery: A Proverb with Many Faces
This ancient phrase has long been an enigma for modern philologists. Scholars such as M. L. West and W. J. Verdenius, alongside others like K. Sittl and V. Longo, have fiercely debated its exact origins and nuances. Following these academic discussions, we can see how the Greek landscape offered a polysemic vocabulary to writers in antiquity.
A first context where we find the allusion to the oak and the rock—or the tree and the rock—centres on mythology. Trees and rocks were the quintessential natural furniture of the mythical world. They served as the primitive weapons of giants and centaurs, or acted as natural refuges for bees before the invention of hives. This is attested in a wide array of sources, from the comic poet Hermippus (fr. 31) to the mythographers Apollodorus (1.6.1; 2.5.4) and Diodorus Siculus (4.12), or as bee habitats in Pseudo-Phocylides (172–173) and a fragment of Euripides (fr. 221) cited by Pseudo-Longinus (Subl. 40.4). A striking example of this mythological landscape being weaponised appears in Plato’s Sophist (246a):
“Stranger: “And indeed there seems to be a battle like that of the gods and the giants going on among them, because of their disagreement about existence.”
Theaetetus: “How so?”
Stranger: “Some of them drag down everything from heaven and the invisible to earth, actually grasping rocks and trees with their hands (ταῖς χερσὶν ἀτεχνῶς πέτρας καὶ δρῦς περιλαμβάνοντες); for they lay their hands on all such things and maintain stoutly that that alone exists which can be touched and handled…”
The arboreal connection in the mythological world is surprisingly reflected in another expression we still use in our everyday language: “to be an Adonis.” The mythological figure of Adonis, who remains our cultural benchmark for ultimate physical beauty, was famously born from a tree. According to the myth, his mother, Myrrha, fled her father’s wrath after deceiving him into an incestuous affair. Desperate, she begged the gods for help, and they transformed her into a myrrh tree. Still pregnant, the tree eventually split open to give birth to Adonis. Thus, the character representing the absolute pinnacle of mortal beauty was, quite literally, born from the natural landscape.
Secondly, we observe this expression associated with contexts of dialogue or digressions. Examples of this meaning can be found in sources as ancient as Homer’s Iliad, when Hector realises it is impossible to reason with the wrathful Achilles before their one-on-one duel. In this case, the expression refers to avoiding superfluous conversations—akin to the English idiom asking, “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” or in Spanish “discutir sobre el sexo de los ángeles” (to argue about the gender of angels):
“There is no way now I may from oak tree or from rock (ἀπὸ δρυὸς οὐδ᾿ ἀπὸ πέτρης) have a lovers’ chat with him, just as youth and maiden—youth and maiden!—chat the one with the other. It would be better to clash in strife as quickly as possible; let us know to which of us the Olympian will grant glory.” (Hom. Il. 22.126)
It is curious, as scholars like D. J. van Lennep (1774 –1853) have pointed out, to see the connection drawn here between the physical landscape and a pleasant conversation between two lovers. A similar discursive link between landscape and digression appears at the very beginning of Hesiod’s Theogony when the poet feels he is getting sidetracked before even starting his tale:
“So spoke great Zeus’ ready-speaking daughters, and they plucked a staff, a branch of luxuriant laurel, a marvel, and gave it to me… But what is this to me, about an oak or a rock?” (Hes. Theog. 35: ἀλλὰ τίη μοι ταῦτα περὶ δρῦν ἢ περὶ πέτρην)
Modern scholars like Chris Eckerman (2025) argue against purely metaphorical or prophetic interpretations of these verses. Instead, the phrase here can be understood as a literal reference to the rural landscape. Because the ancient Greek preposition peri (περὶ)combined with the accusative denotes spatial movement, Hesiod is likely referring to his past life walking around trees and boulders as a shepherd. By dismissing these elements, Hesiod symbolically leaves behind his physical roaming through the pastoral landscape to embrace his new calling as a divinely inspired singer. This reading demonstrates that even when rejecting a former lifestyle, the ancient mind fundamentally used topography and the natural environment to define personal identity and major life transitions.
A third meaning found in ancient sources refers to insensibility, bringing us back to Plutarch’s letter. Authors such as Nonnus or Cicero use the oak and the rock as natural representations of unperturbed behaviour, demonstrating that the landscape provided the ultimate vocabulary for emotionlessness. When the Roman orator Cicero wanted to argue that a wise person must still feel human emotions, he insisted that man is not “hewn from oak or sculpted from stone” (Acad. pr. 2.101: Non enim est e saxo sculptus aut e robore dolatus). Centuries later, the epic poet Nonnus highlighted the absurdity of trying to reason with an unfeeling heart by asking:
“Who talks to an oak? Who has beguiled a lifeless fir-tree? Who ever persuaded a cornel-tree, and took a rock in marriage?” (Dion. 48.504: τίς δρυῒ μῦθον ἔλεξε; τίς ἄπνοον ἤπαφε πεύκην; τίς κρανέην παρέπεισε, καὶ ἐς γάμον ἤγαγε πέτρην;)
For the ancients, to be human was to feel; to be a rock or a tree was to be a passive, silent spectator in the landscape. Interestingly, both Plutarch and Cicero use this expression to counter the characteristic behaviour of apatheia (the eradication of passions) practiced by the Stoics.
However, there is a fourth meaning, also present in Plutarch’s letter, which is even more fascinating, as it points directly to human origins and genealogy.
The Heart of the Proverb: Genealogy, Autochthony, and Oracles
When Plutarch uses this expression in his letter, he does so in reference to the offspring he has had with his wife, i.e., his children. Although, as we observed in the previous section, the phrase serves as a rejection of stoic impassivity in the face of his young daughter’s death, the profound emotionality that surfaces is intimately tied to his sense of connection and lineage. A father who has raised children inherently empathises with this pain.
This concept of being born from oak and rock is incredibly ancient. We can trace it back to Homer’s Odyssey (19.163), when Penelope questions the disguised Odysseus about his origins:
“Yet even so tell me of your stock from which you come; for you are not sprung from an oak of ancient story, or from a stone.” (ἀλλὰ καὶ ὥς μοι εἰπὲ τεὸν γένος, ὁππόθεν ἐσσί. οὐ γὰρ ἀπὸ δρυός ἐσσι παλαιφάτου οὐδ᾿ ἀπὸ πέτρης).
This passage directly alludes to human origins, establishing that every mortal has progenitors and belongs to a specific oikos (household) and family. We find this exact expression again in Plato’s Apology when Socrates defends himself against the charges at his trial in 399 BCE. Appealing to his judges, Socrates declares:
“I surely also have some relations, my very good friend, and on this very point there is this from Homer: I too was not born ‘of oak or of rock,’ but of men, so I do have family and indeed sons (οὐδ’ ἐγὼ ‘ἀπὸ δρυὸς οὐδ’ ἀπὸ πέτρης’ πέφυκα ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἀνθρώπων, ὥστε καὶ οἰκεῖοί μοί εἰσι καὶ ὑεῖς γε), men of Athens, three: one is already in his teens, the other two are children; but nevertheless I shall bring none of them up here and implore you to acquit me.” (Pl. Ap. 34d)
In these lines, we not only observe how Homer’s epic poetry wove the intellectual background of the Greeks, but we also see Socrates employing Penelope’s expression from the Odyssey to reinforce the very concept of human lineage. Human beings, unlike ancient rocks and oaks, possess a genealogy that inherently connects them to the rest of mortality. The proverb reflects thus a human interrelationality. Interestingly, if we consult the ancient scholia (marginal commentaries to ancient texts) on these Homeric passages, some scholars connected the expression to exposed children (expositi). These were infants abandoned by their parents in the wilderness; consequently, the natural elements—a tree, an animal, a hill, a rock—symbolically became their progenitors. Mythological figures such as Paris, Oedipus, or Romulus and Remus are classic examples of this infant abandonment, condemned to the wild and forced to reclaim a lost lineage.
It is equally fascinating that the rock and the oak point toward two of the most renowned anthropogonies, i.e., myths of human origin, in Greek antiquity. On the one hand, the arboreal connection reflects the Race of Bronze, as described by Hesiod in his Works and Days. According to the poet, Zeus created a formidable and violent third generation of mortal human beings directly from ash trees. These tree-born warriors were characterised by their sheer physical power, destructive nature, and unyielding hearts. On the other hand, the rock evokes the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, a narrative intimately linked to the universal flood motif found across many ancient cultures. Following the great deluge that wiped out early humanity, the surviving couple sought divine guidance. They were instructed by an oracle to walk forward and throw the “bones of their mother”—interpreted as the stones of the earth—over their shoulders. As they cast these stones behind them, the rocks miraculously softened and transformed into an entirely new generation of men and women, physically binding human resilience to the geology of the landscape itself.
If we broaden our research lens and compare this to other ancient religious contexts, we can observe that this association of organic nature with primeval origins was not exclusively Greek. It resonated across the entire Mediterranean, finding cultural parallels even in biblical texts, demonstrating a shared regional trope regarding the dawn of humanity:
“As a thief is disgraced when he is caught, so the people of Israel are disgraced—they, their kings and their officials, their priests and their prophets. They say to wood, ‘You are my father,’ and to stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ (אֹמְרִ֨ים לָעֵ֜ץ אָ֣בִי אַ֗תָּה וְלָאֶ֨בֶן֙ אַ֣תְּ יְלִדְתָּ֔נוּ) They have turned their backs to me and not their faces…” (Jeremiah 2:26-27).
This Levantine context reveals fascinating intersections between the cults condemned by the biblical prophets and the broader regional worship of fertility figures like Ba’al and Adonis. The Book of Ezekiel (8:14), for instance, explicitly describes women weeping for Tammuz, the Near Eastern counterpart and direct precursor to the Greek Adonis. As a dying-and-rising deity, Adonis was intimately tied to the agricultural cycle, vegetation, and fertility. It is no coincidence that his mythological origin stems from the myrrh tree, as previously mentioned. Throughout the ancient Mediterranean, myrrh was an exquisite, highly prized luxury commodity, deeply intertwined with the sensual and erotic realm, a connection vividly celebrated in the biblical Song of Songs:
“My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh resting between my breasts.” (Song 1:13)
“I arose to open for my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh, on the handles of the bolt.” (Songs 5:5)
In the light of these examples and others (Songs 3:6; 4:6; 5:13), the ancient reverence for the tree goes beyond a simple metaphor for human lineage; it embodies the pulsing, fertile, and sensory vitality of the natural landscape itself. However, the true ‘magic’ of this proverb lies in its connection to sacred and oracular topography. Ancient scholiasts, as well as Plato in his Phaedrus, suggest that these were not mere generic elements of nature for ancient Greeks:
“Well, my friend, those at the sanctuary of Zeus at Dodona said that the words from an oak were the first prophetic utterances. So for the people of that time, because of their simple-mindedness in that they weren’t wise as you youngsters are, it was enough to listen to the oak and the rock (δρυὸς καὶ πέτρας ἀκούειν), provided only that they were telling the truth. But for you perhaps it makes a difference who is speaking and where they come from.” (Pl. Phrd. 275b-c)
As we can see in Socrates’ response to Phaedrus, the oak and the rock represented the mantic landscape par excellence: the whispering, prophetic oak of Dodona and the sacred, voice-channelling rock of Delphi. In the Greek worldview, nature was not merely a material point of origin; it was a living channel of communication with the divine. The oak and the rock represent an incredibly ancient genesis from time immemorial, but simultaneously, this distinctive element automatically connects them with the wisdom of the ancestors and the mytho-religious past preserved in oracular contexts and shared mythological knowledge.
Recent archaeological perspectives offer a fascinating material counterpart to this enduring literary motif. As scholar Lucy Goodison (2009) suggests, the persistent pairing of “oak and stone” in Greek literature, especially in archaic poetry, might actually reflect a deep, proverbial memory of Late Bronze Age ritual practices. Iconography from Minoan and Mycenaean gold signet rings frequently depicts ecstatic scenes where human figures interact directly with sacred trees and oval boulders, or baetyls, engaging in what appears to be visionary epiphany and divine communication (Fig. 5). This idea connects the interpretation of Theogony line 35 regarding the movement “around” (peri) trees and stones. From this viewpoint, the oak and the rock were never just rhetorical metaphors for the ancient Greeks; they seem to be the physical remnants of an incredibly ancient divinatory and ritualistic tradition. This material evidence bridges the gap between the prehistoric Aegean and the classical world, showing how the landscape itself served as an uninterrupted medium for accessing the divine.
Conclusions: The Landscape as an Archive of Memory
The journey of the phrase “born from oak or rock” reveals an impressive cultural continuity. Surviving from the archaic epics of Homer all the way to the imperial era in the intimate letters of Plutarch, it proves that the natural landscape is inextricably encoded into the very DNA of Greek literature. This was never just a colourful idiom; it was a testament to how the ancient mind mapped its reality.
Through this proverb, we witness a profound organic bond between humanity and the environment. The people of the ancient Mediterranean did not understand themselves in isolation. Their identity, their genealogy, and even their capacity to process profound grief were measured and defined in direct contrast to their topography. They understood human fragility and mortality precisely because they lived alongside the eternal hardness of the rock and the deep, enduring roots of the oak tree. Today, we have largely lost this environmental connection. As modern societies often view nature merely as a backdrop or a resource, we forget the communicative power of the spaces we inhabit. Rediscovering these ancient expressions is at the very core of the HIEROTOPOI project’s mission. By decoding how the ancients wove the organic world into the fabric of their thoughts, we can better understand the intrinsic value of natural and sacred spaces in shaping human emotion and identity. As we continue to develop this research at the Austrian Archaeological Institute with the support of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), our goal is to bring these ancient spatial dialogues back into the modern light, perhaps teaching us how to converse with our own landscapes once more.
Bibliography, Sources and Further Readings:
Apollodorus, Bibl.: Apollodorus, The Library, trans. J. G. Frazer, Loeb Classical Library 122 (Cambridge, MA, 1921).
Cicero, Acad. pr.: Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods. Academics, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library 268 (Cambridge, MA, 1933).
Diodorus Siculus, Bibl. hist.: Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, trans. C. H. Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library 303 (Cambridge, MA, 1935).
Eckerman, C. (2025). On that Tree and Rock Again: Hesiod´s Theogony, line 35. Exemplaria Classica, 29, 9-16. https://doi.org/10.33776/EUHU/ec.v29.9224
Elliger, K., & Rudolph, W. (eds.). (1997). Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (5th ed., rev. by A. Schenker). Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.
Euripides, Fr.: Euripides, Fragments, ed. and trans. C. Collard and M. Cropp, Loeb Classical Library 504 (Cambridge, MA, 2008).
Ezekiel: The Holy Bible, New International Version. (2011). Biblica.
Forte, A. S.W. (2015). Speech from Tree and Rock: Recovery of a Bronze Age Metaphor. American Journal of Philology, 136, 1–35.
Golden, Mark. 1988. Did the Ancients Care When Their Children Died? Greece and Rome, 35,156–63.
Goodison, L. (2009). “Why all this about oak or stone?”: Trees and boulders in Minoan religion. Hesperia Supplements, 42, 51–57. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27759930
Hermippus, Fr.: Hermippus, en Poetae Comici Graeci (PCG), ed. R. Kassel and C. Austin, Vol. 5 (Berlin/New York, 1986).
Hesiod, Theog.; Op.: Hesiod, Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia, ed. and trans. G. W. Most, Loeb Classical Library 57 (Cambridge, MA, 2018).
Homer, Il.; Od.: Homer, Iliad / Odyssey, trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 1919/1999).
Jeremiah: The Holy Bible, New International Version. (2011). Biblica.
Longo, Vincenzo. 1956. “Un’interpretazione di Omero.” In Ἀντίδωρον Hugoni Henrico Paoli Oblatum, 183–203. Instituto di Filologia Classica, Genoa.
Nonnus, Dion.: Nonnus, Dionysiaca, trans. W. H. D. Rouse, Loeb Classical Library 346 (Cambridge, MA, 1940).
Plato, Apol.; Phdr.; Soph.: Plato, Lysis. Symposium. Phaedrus, ed. and trans. C. Emlyn-Jones and W. Preddy, Loeb Classical Library 166 (Cambridge, MA, 2022).
Plutarch, Consol. ad uxor.: Plutarch, Moralia, Volume VII, trans. P. H. De Lacy and B. Einarson, Loeb Classical Library 405 (Cambridge, MA, 1959).
Pomeroy, S. B. (Ed.). (1999). Plutarch’s Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife: English Translations, Commentary, Interpretive Essays, and Bibliography. Oxford University Press.
Pseudo-Phocylides, Sent.: The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, ed. and trans. P. W. van der Horst (Leiden, 1978).
Pseudo-Longinus, Subl.: Longinus, On the Sublime, trans. W. H. Fyfe, Loeb Classical Library 199 (Cambridge, MA, 1995).
Sittl, K. (1889). Ἡσιόδου τὰ ἅπαντα. Paraskeva Leoni, Athens.
Song of Songs, Song: The Holy Bible, New International Version. (2011). Biblica.
Verdenius, W. J. (1958). Hesiod “Theogony” 35. Mnemosyne, 11(1), 20–24. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4428071
West, M. L. (1966). Hesiod. Theogony. Oxford University Press.