Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

470
Apollon and Artemis
makes the Salii chant his exploits 'their brows bound with branches
of poplarV though later usage prescribed wreaths of bayl It was
perhaps as followers of Herakles that successful athletes in Kos^
and at Athens^ wore white-poplar. But the practice has ultimately
a chthonian significance. The white-poplar, ' the finest tree which
grows in modern Greece^' had in ancient times a variety of
Mus. Cat. Coins Caria, etc. p. 261 nos. 342 pi. 41, 3 ( = my fig. 364), 343 ( = my fig. 365),
344, 345 pi. 41, 4, Hunter Cat. Coins ii. 444 no. 80, Head Hist, nutn.'^ p. 641 f.). This
wreath, formerly said to be of vine-leaves (Rasche Lex. Num. vii. 1039), is now commonly
described as an oak-wreath ; and such it might possibly be (Class. Rev. 1903 xvii.
418 fig. 17). But our passage rather suggests that it is intended for the wreath of whitepoplar
sacred to the Rhodian Helios. Mr E. S. G. Robinson, who at my request kindly
compared the specimens in the British Museum with some actual leaves of white-poplar,
reports (June 24, 1921): ' I have looked at the coins of Rhodes you mention and have
Fig. 365-
little doubt that the leaves of the wreath are meant for white poplar and not for oak, as
you will see from the two enclosed casts ; they (the leaves) are not drawn with any great
care, but the essential difference between the oak and poplar (the pyramidical shape of
the latter) seems to have been observed.'
A certain sympathy between the white-poplar and Helios is attested by the belief that
the olive, the white-poplar, and the willow turn their leaves at the solstice (Varr. rer.
rust. 1. 46 = Plin. nat. hist. 2. 108. Plin. tiat. hist. 16. 87 and 18. 266 f. adds the elm
and the linden).
1 Verg. Aen. 8. 285 ff.
2 Interp. Serv. in Verg. Aen. 8. 276, Macrob. Sat. 3. 12. i ff. See further R. Peter
in Roscher Lex. Myth. i. 2926 f
^ Theokr. 2. 120 ff. with schol. ad loc. * Aristoph. mib. 1007.
^ So Dr W. Leaf in his note on //. 13. 389. Cp. E. Step Wayside and Woodland
Trees London 1905 p. 55: ' The White Poplar... grows into a large tree, something be-
tween sixty and a hundred feet high.'