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
each other, as it happens, and also the method of divination by victims
has come from Egypt.

Moreover, it is true also that the Egyptians were the first of men who
made solemn assemblies and processions and approaches to the temples,
and from them the Hellenes have learnt them, and my evidence for this
is that the Egyptian celebrations of these have been held from a very
ancient time, whereas the Hellenic were introduced but lately. The
Egyptians hold their solemn assemblies not once in the year but often,
especially and with the greatest zeal and devotion at the city of
Bubastis for Artemis, and next at Busiris for Isis; for in this
last-named city there is a very great temple of Isis, and this city
stands in the middle of the Delta of Egypt; now Isis is in the tongue of
the Hellenes Demeter: thirdly, they have a solemn assembly at the city
of Sais for Athene, fourthly at Heliopolis for the Sun (Helios), fifthly
at the city of Buto in honour of Leto, and sixthly