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[162] Δήλῳ. This visit to Delos seems to belong to the voyage when the Greeks sailed from Aulis to Troy, passing through the Cyclads to Delos, thence by Icaria to Samos, and so on by Lesbos ( Od.4. 342) to Lemnos and the Trojan coast, as in the route described by Nestor, Od.3. 169 foll. Nitzsch quotes from Voss, to the effect that Delos was in Agamemnon's time the regular oracle for sea-faring men. There would seem to have been a palmtree always preserved in the precinct of Delos, like the “μορίαι” or sacred olives in the Academia at Athens; cp. Soph. O. C.705.The Schol. refers to the “πρωτόγονος φοῖνιξ”, connected with the childbearing of Leto, Eur. Hec.458; and Cicero (de Legg. 1. 1. 2) declares that the palm was still to be seen in his day, ‘quod Homericus Ulixes Deli se proceram et teneram palmam vidisse dixit, hodie monstrant eandem;’ so too Pliny, N. H. 16. 99. 44.

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hide References (4 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (4):
    • Euripides, Hecuba, 458
    • Homer, Odyssey, 3.169
    • Homer, Odyssey, 4.342
    • Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 705
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