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. Moreover, I think
that the women were called doves by the people of Dodona for the reason
that they were barbarians and because it seemed to them that they
uttered voice like birds; but after a time (they say) the dove spoke
with human voice, that is when the woman began to speak so that they
could understand; but so long as she spoke a Barbarian tongue she seemed
to them to be uttering voice like a bird: for if it had been really a
dove, how could it speak with human voice? And in saying that the
dove was black, they indicate that the woman was Egyptian. The ways of
delivering oracles too at Thebes in Egypt and at Dodona closely resemble