quotes the old historian Cleodemus about the strange omen presaging the Athenian disasters at Syracuse, how a vast flock of crows alighted upon their donarium, and pecked to pieces the owl, spear, robes of Pallas, and the dates of her tree.
This brings back our attention to the branch held forth in Apollo's hand; in which it is impossible to recognise the bay twig, the customary badge of the god, in the character in which he is here depicted. It is unmistakeably cut from a chesnut tree—one having no connexion with this god under any of his many titles—the trees consecrated to him being the palm and the bay; from either of which were woven the wreaths given for prizes to the victors in his games. The only conjecture that suggests itself to me in explanation of the anomaly is that the Roman artist, to add stronger expression to the character filled by the god in the present scene, has chosen to equip him with a sprig of the oracle-giving φηγός of Dodona. That the latter was the chesnut, not the oak, as commonly understood, is evident from the distinction Pausanias makes between its fruit (as the sole edible mast) and that of other δρῦς;[1] as well as from the name Διὸς βάλανος appropriated by the Greeks to the sweet, or Spanish, chesnut. To the famous emphalos, "the centre-point of earth," is given due prominence, in the shape of the conical pillar in front of Apollo; it was made, Pausanias tells us, of white marble.[2] The present figure of this primeval monument is highly valuable, as it has the look of a faithful picture of the original; for, although it regularly formis the seat of Apollo on the coins of the Seleucide, yet the minuteness of the space there available reduces the copy to a merely conventional representation. The pillar at the back of Themis, supporting a celestial globe (or, perhaps, sun-dial) is frequently introduced in sculptures and gems representing astrologers and their operations, and may therefore be reasonably supposed to have reference in this place to the visible presence of the solar deity.
The subjects filling the exergue remain to be noticed. The dwarf tree at the right hand extremity, with its singular fan-shaped terminations, can be meant for nothing else than the palmetto, which doubtless was then cultivated at Delphi
- ↑ I. 17, 5, for the nature of the tree at Dodona; VIII. 1, 6, for its fruit, the discovery of which he assigns to Pelangos, the civilizer of the aboriginal Arcadians.
- ↑ It exactly corresponds in shape to the Hindoo Lingam, the universal emblem of the Creator, and was in all probability the original idol of the holy place.
