Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/429

 HERODOTUS AND THE MIRACLE OF DODONA. 397 merchants and sold, the one in Greece, the other in Libya. The Theban priests boldly assured Herodotus that much pains had been taken to discover what had become of these women so ex- ported, and that the fact of their having been taken to Greece and Libya had been accordingly verified. 1 The historian of Halicarnassus cannot for a moment think of admitting the miracle which harmonized so well with the feelings of the priestesses and the Dodonaeans. 2 " How (he asks) could a dove speak with human voice ? " But the narrative of the priests at Thebes, though its prodigious improbability hardly requires to be stated, yet involved no positive departure from the laws of nature and possibility, and therefore Herodotus makes no diffi- culty in accepting it. The curious circumstance is, that he turns the native Dodonoean legend into a figurative representation, or rather a misrepresentation, of the supposed true story told by the Theban priests. According to his interpretation, the woman who came from Thebes to Dodona was called a dove, and affirmed to utter sounds like a bird, because she was non-Hellenic and spoke a foreign tongue : when she learned to speak the language of the country, it was then said that the dove spoke with a human voice. And the dove was moreover called black, because of the woman's Egyptian color. That Herodotus should thus bluntly reject a miracle, recount- ed to him by the prophetic women themselves as the prime cir- cumstance in the origines of this holy place, is a proof of the hold which habits of dealing with historical evidence had acquired over his mind ; and the awkwardness of his explanatory media- tion between the dove and the woman, marks not less his anxie- ty, while discarding the legend, to let it softly down into a story quasi-historical and not intrinsically incredible. We may observe another example of the unconscious tendency 1 Herod, ii. 54, 8 Herod, ii. 57. 'ETT TEuvy According to one statement, the word Ilefaiaf in the Thessalian dialect meant both a dove and a prophetess (Scriptor. Rer. Mythicarum, ed. Bcde, i. 96). Had there been any truth in this, Herodotus could hardly have failed to notice it, inasmuch as it vrould exactly have helped him out of the difficulty which he felt