Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/444

414 Eumelus the epic poet in his Europia, which must have described the fortunes of the Cretan Zeus, "spoke of the image of Apollo at Delphi as a pillar in the lines:—

In other words, at Delphi as elsewhere the sacred tree was represented by a column, a fact which throws fresh light on two at least of the problems connected with the Delphic cult.

Zeus in the Libyan Oasis had an oracular oak, which in process of time withered away. Q. Curtius Rufus the historian, writing in the first century of our era, describes the cult-object in the Ammonium not as a sacred oak, nor even as a high pillar, but as "closely resembling an omphalos.'" I would suggest the same origin for the omphalos at Delphi, viz.: that it was the relic of a sacred stump or tree. This accords with the elongated shape that it has on certain vases. It also accounts for several other peculiarities of this much-debated object. The eagles of