Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

472
Apollon and Artemis
Laonome a sister of Herakles' and fell fighting in the land of
the Chalybes, had a burial mound near the sea beneath a tall
white-poplarl
If the white-poplar was thus regarded as a Borderland tree, the
black-poplar was even more closely connected with the Otherworld.
The woods of Persephone on the further side of Okeanos consisted
of 'tall black-poplars and willows that shed their fruits' When
Teukros quitted Salamis to seek a new home across the water, ' he
is said to have bound his brows with a poplar-wreath*.' When
Aeneas on the anniversary of his father's death held a contest for
ships, the Trojan crews were 'veiled with poplar-leafage^' Varro was
buried in an earthenware coffin 'after the manner of the Pythagoreans
on leave's of myrtle, olive, and black-poplar^.' And the place where
Augustus' body had been burnt on the Campus Martius was enclosed
by an iron fence and planted with black-poplars".
Nor can we in this context ignore the myth of the Heliades.
Virgil, it is true, in his Eclogues transforms these sisters of Phaethon
into alders": but in his Aeneid\\&^ like the great majority of Latin
writers, speaks of.them as poplars** ; and the Greeks almost with one
consent^" call them black-poplars'". As such they appear in their
1 Schol. Ap. Rhod. i. 1241. Cod. Paris, has Kaovb-qv for \aovbixr}v.
^ Ap. Rhod. 4. 1475 ff. Cp. E. B. Browning Rhyme of the Duchess May i. 2. I
abeles i' the kirkyard grow,' iii. •2. i 'The abeles moved in the sun.'
•" Od. 10. 509 f., cp. Pans. 10. 30. 6.
* Hor. od. I. 7.21 ff. Porphyrion ad loc. bene, non qualibet s.e.A popu/ea coi-ona, propter
fortitudinem aninii ; nam haec arbos in tutela Herculis est. But we have no right to
assume that popiiltis means popidus alba. W. Hirschfelder in his note on od. i. 7. 22 f.
makes the same assumption.
^ Verg. Aen. 5. 134. Serv. and interp. Serv. ad loc. drag in Hercules, and even Hebe,
to explain ' cetera populea ^^X^Xwi froiide itiventns '
!
® Plin. 7iat. hist. 35. 160.
^ Strab. 236. See further O. Richter Topographie der Stadt Rom"^ Mtinchen 1901
p. 250 f., H. Jordan—C. Hiilsen Topographie dei- Stadt Rom i)ii Alterthiim Berlin 1907
i. 3. 620.
® Verg. eel. 6. 62 f. turn Phaethontiadas musco circumdat amarae (so Diomed. art.
gramm. 2 p. 453, 35 f. Keil amaro cod. R.) | corticis atque solo proceras erigit alnos.
G. Knaack in Roscher Lex. Myth. iii. 2192 says : 'diese gesuchte Abweichung ist wohl
auf Cornelius Gallus zuriickzufiihren.' In Germ. Aral. 365 f. hunc, nova silva,
|
' Six
planxere
ignotis maestae Phaethontides ulnis P. Burman cj. enatis versae Phaethontides ahiis, which
is ingenious, but unnecessary, cp. Avien. Aral, phaen. 793 f. ilium prolixis durae Phae-
thontides ulnis I
planxerunt.
^ Verg. Aen. 10. 190 with Serv. ad loc, cp. Yiyg. fab. 152 and 154, Plin. nat. hist.
37. 31, Val. Flacc. 5. 429, Myth. Vat. i. 118, 2. 57 (in arbores commutatae sunt alnos,
vel, ut alii dicunt, in populos).
For a numismatic representation of Phaethon's sisters as larches (?) see supra p. 402 n. o.
^^ The only exception is schol. Eur. Hipp. 732 iv 8i t^S "Hpidafw al 'HXtdSes /cipai tov
^a^dovra baKpvovaai et's (priyoi/s fx.iTep\y)d-q(Tav.
^^ Schol. H.Q.V. Od. 17. 208 (17 5^ icropia trapa roh rpayiKoh), Ap. Rhod. 4. 6036".