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57.

I expect that these women were called “doves” by the people of Dodona because they spoke a strange language, and the people thought it like the cries of birds; [2] then the woman spoke what they could understand, and that is why they say that the dove uttered human speech; as long as she spoke in a foreign tongue, they thought her voice was like the voice of a bird. For how could a dove utter the speech of men? The tale that the dove was black signifies that the woman was Egyptian1. [3]

The fashions of divination at Thebes of Egypt and at Dodona are like one another; moreover, the practice of divining from the sacrificed victim has also come from Egypt.

1 Perhaps Herodotus' explanation is right. But the name “doves” may be purely symbolic; thus priestesses of Demeter and Artemis were sometimes called Bees.

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