126 THE PAGAN-CHRISTIAN OVERLAP OF THE WISE BIRD. 



oracles were obtained at Dodona through pigeons which, sitting on 

 oak trees, revealed the will of Zeus. Sophocles, "B.C. 400, speaks 

 of two oracular doves, and Herodotus, who wrote a little before 

 this, was told by the priestesses at Dodona that a black pigeon 

 flew there from Thebes, in Egypt, and, sitting on an ilex, 

 proclaimed in a human voice that an oracle must be erected for 

 Zeus. Varro, the Roman, who wrote on Agriculture about 50 years 

 before Christ, distinguished three kinds of pigeons wild, tame, and 

 mixed. The miscellcc, or mixed, show us that already there was a 

 tendency to the variation that is now so marked. The (ifjresfes, 

 or wild pigeons, were of a blue colour, and so were called by 

 Herodotus, Homer, and others, Wxetot, in relation to the adjective 

 Tt'Aoy, dusky or blue, the hue of our rock-pigeons. And the 

 cellares, or tame pigeons, were doubtless those which the Greeks 

 designated by the term irtp.artpai, used by Sophocles and Xenophon 

 and exclusively by the Septuagint, and in the New Testament. 

 The dove-cote of Plato was 6 jrep<rrpeij'. 



The amatory disposition and fecundity of the dove made it a 

 suitable associate for a goddess of love and maternity. In the 

 East the favourite sacrifice to Istar, Astoret, or Astarte, was this 

 bird. And it is a highly significant fact that young pigeons and 

 turtle-doves were sacrificed to Jahveh, under the Levitical law, as 

 an atonement for the impurity of childbirth, whilst similar 

 offerings were brought by the Virgin to the Temple at Jerusalem 

 after the birth of Christ. 



According to Hyginus, chief of the Palatine Library, a collector 

 of mythological legends, and one of Ovid's friends, the Greeks 

 thought that an egg dropped from the sky into the Euphrates ; 

 fishes carried it to the bank, where a dove sat upon it and hatched 

 out Aphrodite. 



Diodorus the Sicilian, a contemporary of Hyginus relates that 

 " at Ascalon, in Syria, is a temple dedicated to the famous 

 goddess Derceto. She, having given birth to a daughter, 

 thereupon, in a paroxysm of remorse, killed its father, abandoned 

 the child, and destroyed herself. The infant was, however, 



