On doves and olive branches (warning: rabbit hole ahead!)

Greek Koine and Biblical and Medieval Greek
1

Il 233/Zs Δευκαλίων γὰρ μετὰ τὸν ἐπὶ αὐτοῦ γενόμενον κατακλυσμὸν παραγενόμενος εἰς τὴν Ἤπειρον ἐμαντεύεντο ἐν τῆι δρυΐ. πελειάδος δὲ χρησμὸν αὐτῶι δούσης κατοικίζει τὸν τόπον συναθροίσας τοὺς περιλειφθέντας ἀπὸ τοῦ κατακλυσμοῦ

In my previous post I mentioned this fragment from Homer’s scholia (thanks again for the help).
It is an interesting fragment, as it is the first non-Biblical and non-Mesopotamian mention of a dove (or any bird) in relation to the flood hero I’ve found (not including Berosus).
But it gets better (or worse?).
The text mentions Deucalion consults (ἐμαντεύεντο) an oak/oak oracle (δρυΐ), and the oracle (χρησμός) is then given to him by a dove (πελειάδος).

Question: this seems to imply a talking dove, unless the oracle is non-verbal? Could that be the case?

And then a step further down the rabbit hole:
In Euripides, Cyclops, line 615, Odysseus uses an oak branch (δρυὸς) to poke out the cyclops’ eye. But a little earlier, in line 455, he plans to use an olive branch (ἀκρεμὼν ἐλαίας). This is commonly translated as an olive-stake, possibly to harmonize with the oak branch mentioned later.

Question: does anyone know more about the traditions surrounding the kind of wood Odysseus used, or perhaps if olive and oak wood are ever confused or conflated elsewhere?

Ps. the LXX uses περιστερά for “dove” and the “fresh olive branch” is described as a φύλλον ἐλαίας κάρφος, so the connection isn’t very strong on the word level.

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I believe that mwh mentioned that it should be ἐμαντεύετο in the last thread.

I assume you’ve seen Frazer’s collection of source texts: https://archive.org/details/cu31924029281801/page/n175/mode/2up

The gods often send signs from non-verbal birds, but I don’t know if that’s ever called a χρησμός.

However, there are speaking doves (priestesses?) associated with the grove at Dodona. The LSJ entry links to Herodotus 2. 55,56. And to S. Tr. 172:

ὡς τὴν παλαιὰν φηγὸν αὐδῆσαί ποτε
Δωδῶνι δισσῶν ἐκ πελειάδων ἔφη

…as the ancient oak once spoke
from two doves in Dodona, he said.

Oak and olive seem unlikely to me to be confused directly, but I don’t know.

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Yes he did, and yes I remember correcting it. Somehow I copied an old version :frowning:
I’ll have to find a high-schooler to read over all my text one of these days…

Indeed I do. Great secondary source, but a little older and he doesn’t refer as consistently to primary sources as I’d like. I got a few others like him as well.

Thanks a lot!

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Easterling offers the following note on S.Tr.172:

῾172 Δωδωνι: as if from a nominative Δωδών, which is not attested, cf. fr. 455 P&R Δωδώνι ναίων Ζεύς. The common form is Δωδώνη, hence the Latin Dodona.

δισσών έκ πελειάδων: a major problem centres round this phrase: see Jebb’s Appendix, 203-7 and the scholiast’s long note. Doves were traditionally associated with Dodona, both in stories of its foundation, and in some accounts of the oracular responses, cf. Hdt. 2.54-5. Parke (ch. III) inclines to the view that in the early period of Dodona’s history real doves inhabited the sacred oak and their calls were interpreted along with the rustling of the tree as divine utterances.

Late sources, e.g. Pausanias (10.12.10), record that the priestesses of Dodona were called Πελειάδες; this is how most editors take Soph.’s words here, αὐδῆσαι ἐκ would appropriately express the idea of the oak speaking ‘from the mouths’ of the priestesses. But Parke could be right in suggesting that Soph, deliberately used a vague phrase ‘which by its ambiguity allowed the hearer also to take the more obscure meaning that the oracle had been conveyed by birds’ (63). We have no means of telling how precise was Soph.’s information about the practices at Dodona. Elsewhere he mentions ‘the prophetic priestesses of Dodona’ (fr. 456 P&R), but human interpreters were needed whatever the oracular source. At Dodona the interpreters were first priests (the Selloi, cf. 1 i66n.), later priestesses, two or three in number.῾

(Sophocles, Trachiniae - P. E. Easterling: Sophocles, Trachiniae. (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics.),Cambridge University Press, 1982. )

I like Parke’s suggestion here. I would caution against trying to be too literal. Davies doesn’t add much (I found much of his commentary unreadable when I studied this play.)

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Not much room for interpretation in the Herodotus passage, “ἱζομένην δέ μιν ἐπὶ φηγὸν αὐδάξασθαι φωνῇ ἀνθρωπηίῃ”. That’s a talking bird.

Edit: Though I see in 57 that he gives a de-mythologized version.

πελειάδες δέ μοι δοκέουσι κληθῆναι πρὸς Δωδωναίων ἐπὶ τοῦδε αἱ γυναῖκες, διότι βάρβαροι ἦσαν, ἐδόκεον δέ σφι ὁμοίως ὄρνισι φθέγγεσθαι: [2] μετὰ δὲ χρόνον τὴν πελειάδα ἀνθρωπηίῃ φωνῇ αὐδάξασθαι λέγουσι, ἐπείτε συνετά σφι ηὔδα ἡ γυνή: ἕως δὲ ἐβαρβάριζε, ὄρνιθος τρόπον ἐδόκεέ σφι φθέγγεσθαι, ἐπεὶ τέῳ ἂν τρόπῳ πελειάς γε ἀνθρωπηίῃ φωνῇ φθέγξαιτο; μέλαιναν δὲ λέγοντες εἶναι τὴν πελειάδα σημαίνουσι ὅτι Αἰγυπτίη ἡ γυνὴ ἦν. [3] ἡ δὲ μαντηίη ἥ τε ἐν Θήβῃσι τῇσι Αἰγυπτίῃσι καὶ ἐν Δωδώνῃ παραπλήσιαι ἀλλήλῃσι τυγχάνουσι ἐοῦσαι. ἔστι δὲ καὶ τῶν ἱρῶν ἡ μαντικὴ ἀπ᾽ Αἰγύπτου ἀπιγμένη.

“because, being barbarians they seemed to talk like birds…saying that the dove was black they signified that the woman was Egyptian”

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The scholion for 172

Something like this:

Δωδῶνι δισσῶν ἐκ πελειάδων: The oak in Dodona of Thesprotia, sitting upon which two doves (περιστεραί) prophesied, as if from the nominative Δωδών, like Πλευρών. Homer said Δωδώνην (Δωδώνη nom.).

On the same: Above the oracle in Dodona are two doves (πέλειαι), through which Zeus prophesied like Apollo from a tripod. Some say that they foretell in one way, others another, the priestesses being old woman. For the Molossoi name their old people “πολιοί (gray/venerable)”. Herodotus says in book B: “<what I quoted above, see Perseus>”. Euripides says there are three, others two. And that one came to Libya from Thebes for the oracle of Ammon, the one about Dodona, as in the Paeans of Pindar.