Pesaro. This Sacred Grove is the site of the Votive Stones of Pesaro and was dedicated to Salus, the ancient Roman demi-goddess of well-being. The city of Massilia, a Greek colony, had a sacred grove so close by it that Julius Caesar had it cut down to facilitate his siege. In Pharsalia, the poet Lucan dramatized it as a place where sunlight could not reach through the branches, where no animal or bird lived, where the wind did not blow, but branches moved on their own, where human sacrifice was practiced, in a clear attempt to dramatize the situation and distract from the sacrilege entailed in its destruction. Ancient Near East There are two mentions on this tradition in the Bible: Abraham planted a grove in Beersheba, and called there the name of God. —Genesis 21:33 and where the women wove hangings for the grove. —II Kings 23:7 Excavations at Labraunda have revealed a large shrine assumed to be that of Zeus Stratios mentioned by Herodotus as a large sacred grove of plane trees sacred to Carians. In Syria, there was a grove sacred to Adonis at Afqa. Baltic polytheism A sacred grove is known as alka(s) in Lithuanian and elks in Latvian, however, the terms are also sometimes used to refer to natural holy places in general. The first mention of Baltic sacred groves dates back to 1075 when Adam of Bremen noted Baltic Prussian sacred groves and springs whose sacredness was believed to be polluted by the entry of Christians (solus prohibetur accessus lucorum et fontium, quos autumant pollui christianorum accessu). A few sacred groves in Sambian Peninsula are mentioned in the 14th-century documents of the Teutonic Order (sacra sylva, que Scayte vulgariter nominatur..., silva, quae dicitur Heyligewalt...). A religious centre of intertribal significance was Romuva (Romow) in Nadruvia, Prussia, as described by Peter of Dusburg in 1326. For Curonians sacred groves were closely associated with the cult of the dead. By the early 15th century, with the disappearance of cremation traditions among the Curonians the sacred groves of Courland had lost their crematory function but remained as an inviolable place reserved for the dead. The role of the sacred forests in the 16th-century traditions of Curonian Kings is described in a travel description by Königsberg apothecary Reinhold Lubenau: Celtic polytheism The Celts used sacred groves, called nemeton in Gaulish, for performing rituals, based on Celtic mythology. The