412

PRIESTLY PERSONAGE LEADING GRIFFIN

Oracle of the Libyan Oasis—as 'black'.1 In later Classical days, indeed
they were misdescribed as ' snow-white '.

Long-robed Priestly Personage leading Griffin.

The red jasper lentoid seal from the Vapheio Tomb (Fig. 341)3 pre-
sents a male figure in a long winding
robe whose function in leading the
sacred Griffin leaves us in no doubt as
to his sacerdotal character.

This personage holds a rope that
passes under the guardian monster's
wing and is attached to its neck. The
Griffin, here, with its well-marked crest
of plumes and eagle's beak, much re-
sembles those of the painted stucco
relief from the great East Hall, attached
by a cord round the neck to the column ■'
that is there the baetylic representa-
tive of the Minoan Goddess herself.

Fig. 341. Sacerdotal Figure leadinc In that case, too, the monsters stand on

Lentoid, Vapheio . , , . 0 .__ _r

a triple gradation. So, too, on two oi

the seal-types described above5 with

1 Herodotus ii. 55 makes two ' black doves' saxatik—clearly rock-doves—and foundroost-

(-gWSus /j-eWms) fly from the Egyptian ing places in the turrets and gables of the Villa.
Thebes, one to Dodona, the other to Libya. - As Victor Hehn has well shown, Kidlur-

Characteristically, in the variant account of this pjlanzen ilndHausthiere (1874), p. 295' so lost

given by Silius Italicus (iii. 675-91), the doves to the Greeks were the earlier connexions

become ' snow-white' (iiiveis alis), so as to with the Paphian cult, that in the Homeric
correspond with the colour of the ' sacred Hymn to Aphrodite doves are not eve
doves' from Palestine, only known to the mentioned in connexion with her, while 1
Greeks from the time of the Persian Wars. Sappho's Ode to her as preserved in Diony-
Charon of Lampsacus (cited by Athenaeus, sins of Halicarnassos (fr. 1 Bergk) sue
ix, 394, e) speaks of them as first met with on ignorance is betrayed of the persistent dov
the occasion of the shipwreck of the Persian cult of Cyprus that her car is drawn thiouD
fleet off Mt. Athos, Varro's description of the sky by swifts (w*ees orpovSoi).

1 Tsountas, £qb.'Apx-> ,s9°> Vi' ^' ^'

Griffin : on Jasim-
Tomb (f).

and

Cf.

an Italian farm [De lie Rustica, iii. 7) sup-
plies an interesting record of a succeeding p. 167; Furtwangler, Antike Gemwen
stage in which the two classes of pigeons P. of M.t ii, Pt. II, p. 7S5, Fig. 512,
existed side by side and were producing a which Fig. 341 is reproduced,
cross-breed {misccMum ge?ius). The tamer ' P.ofM., iii, p. 510 seqq., and Fig- °
kind was white and were fed intra Umina ° See above, p. 169, Figs. 130, 131.
iamtac. The wilder are described as a genus