Nested table built with Lua C API crashes

I'm trying to make a deeply nested table in Lua. When I nest past 16 levels my program crashes.

In the example program below, when I change DEPTH to 16 instead of 17 the program does not crash. I can't find any resources that say there is a maximum table depth, and one so low seems odd. The crash is within the call to lua_close().

Am I misunderstanding how to build a table in Lua using the C API, or is there in fact a maximum depth?

#include <assert.h>
#include "lua.h"
#include "lauxlib.h"
#include "lualib.h"

#define DEPTH 17

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    lua_State *L = NULL;
    size_t i = 0;

    L = luaL_newstate();
    assert(NULL!=L);

    luaL_openlibs(L);

    // create the root table
    lua_newtable(L);

    // push DEPTH levels deep onto the table
    for (i=0; i<DEPTH; i++)
    {
        lua_pushstring(L, "subtable");
        lua_newtable(L);
    }

    // nest the DEPTH levels
    for (i=0; i<DEPTH; i++)
    {
        lua_settable(L, -3);
    }

    lua_close(L);

    return 0;
}

You need to increase the stack with lua_checkstack or luaL_checkstack to allow 2*DEPTH slots.