They Say That Two Black Doves Flew From Thebes
In Egypt, And Came One Of Them To Libya And The
Other to their land.
And this latter settled upon an oak-tree and spoke with human voice,
saying that it
Was necessary that a prophetic seat of Zeus should be
established in that place; and they supposed that that was of the gods
which was announced to them, and made one accordingly: and the dove
which went away to the Libyans, they say, bade the Libyans make an
Oracle of Ammon; and this also is of Zeus. The priestesses of Dodona
told me these things, of whom the eldest was named Promeneia, the next
after her Timarete, and the youngest Nicandra; and the other people of
Dodona who were engaged about the temple gave accounts agreeing with
theirs. I however have an opinion about the matter as follows: - If the
Phenicians did in truth carry away the consecrated women and sold one
of them into Libya and the other into Hellas, I suppose that in the
country now called Hellas, which was formerly called Pelasgia, this
woman was sold into the land of the Thesprotians; and then being a
slave there she set up a sanctuary of Zeus under a real oak-tree; as
indeed it was natural that being an attendant of the sanctuary of Zeus
at Thebes, she should there, in the place to which she had come, have
a memory of him; and after this, when she got understanding of the
Hellenic tongue, she established an Oracle, and she reported, I
suppose, that her sister had been sold in Libya by the same Phenicians
by whom she herself had been sold.
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