But further, Athena is the air, not only to the lilies of the field, but to the leaves of the forest.  We saw before the reason why Hermes is said to be the son of Maia, the eldest of the sister stars of spring.  Those stars are called not only Pleiades, but Vergiliae, from a word mingling the ideas of the turning or returning of springtime with the outpouring of rain.  The mother of Vergil bearing the name of Maia, Vergil himself received his name from the seven stars; and he, forming first the mind of Dante, and through him that of Chaucer (besides whatever special minor influence came from the Pastorals and Georgics) became the fountainhead of all the best literary power connected with the love of vegetative nature among civilized races of men.  Take the fact for what it is worth; still it is a strange seal of coincidence, in word and in reality, upon the Greek dream of the power over human life, and its purest thoughts, in the stars of spring.  But the first syllable of the name of Vergil has relation also to another group of words, of which the English ones, virtue and virgin, bring down the force to modern days.  It is a group containing mainly the idea of “spring,” or increase of life in vegetation—­the rising of the new branch of the tree out of the bud, and of the new leaf out of the ground.  It involves, secondarily, the idea of greenness and of strength, but, primarily, that of living increase of a new rod from a stock, stem, or root ("There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse"); and chiefly the stem of certain plants—­either of the rose tribe, as in the budding of the almond rod of Aaron; or of the olive tribe, which has triple significance in this symbolism, from the use of its oil for sacred anointing, for strength in the gymnasium, and for light.  Hence, in numberless divided and reflected ways, it is connected with the power of Hercules and Athena:  Hercules plants the wild olive, for its shade, on the course of Olympia, and it thenceforward gives the Olympic crown of consummate honor and rest; while the prize at the Panathenaic games is a vase of its oil (meaning encouragement to continuance of effort); and from the paintings on these Panathenaic vases we get the most precious clue to the entire character of Athena.  Then to express its propagation by slips, the trees from which the oil was to be taken were called “Moriai,” trees of division (being all descendents of the sacred one in the Erechtheum).  And thus, in one direction, we get to the “children like olive plants round about thy table” and the olive grafting of St. Paul; while the use of the oil for anointing gives chief name to the rod itself of the stem of Jesse, and to all those who were by that name signed for his disciples first in Antioch.  Remember, further, since that name was first given the influence of the symbol, both in extreme unction and in consecration of priests and kings to their “divine right;” and thing, if you can reach with any grasp of thought, what the influence on the earth has been, of those twisted branches whose leaves give gray bloom to the hillsides under every breeze that blows from the midland sea.  But, above and beyond all, think how strange it is that the chief Agonia of humanity, and the chief giving of strength from heaven for its fulfilment, should have been under its night shadow in Palestine.