TY  - JOUR
A1  - Matz, Alicia
A2  - Ambühl, Annemarie
A2  - Carlà-Uhink, Filippo
A2  - Rollinger, Christian
A2  - Walde, Christine
T1  - Quis enim laesos impune putaret esse deos?: Ents, Sacred Groves, and the Cost of Desecration
T2  - thersites 15
N2  - Seneca the Younger, in his Letters, describes a sacred grove as a “thick grove of ancient trees which rise far above the usual height and block the view of the sky with their umbrella of intertwining branches” (Seneca the Younger, Letters 41.3). Fangorn Forest is clearly a sacred site as defined by Seneca, made even more sacred by the presence of the Ents. Thus, to violate it would be a terrible act of desecration, not unlike Lucan’s narrator’s shock at Caesar’s desecration of the sacred grove at Massilia (Lucan BC 3.447 – 8, quoted in the title of this paper). After exploring the relationship between Ents and sacred groves, the paper will compare the fate of Caesar to that of Saruman, who violated Fangorn Forest. Just as Augoustakis (2006) argues that the violation of the grove foreshadows Caesar’s death, so too Saruman’s death at the hands of Wormtongue becomes a fitting punishment for his violation of Fangorn.
KW  - sacred trees
KW  - Ents
KW  - Tolkien
KW  - Saruman
KW  - Julius Caesar
Y1  - 2022
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/56540
SN  - 2364-7612
VL  - 2022
IS  - 15
SP  - 204
EP  - 231
ER  -