e ark (skaphê) in which they were found. Menander seems to have followed a somewhat different tradition, for he says that the children were found by an old goatherd, and that the token by which they were recognized was a small scrip or wallet (pêridion). The legend of the exposed twins, the children of a divine father by a human mother, who were suckled by animals, reared by a peasant, and grew up to quarrel about a kingdom, presents points of resemblance to the legend of Romulus and Remus; and it has even been suggested that the Greek tale, as dramatized by Sophocles, was the ultimate source of the Roman story, having filtered to the early Roman historian Q. Fabius Pictor through the medium of the Greek historian Diocles of Peparethus, whom Fabius Pictor appears to have followed on this and many other points of early Roman history (Plut. Romulus 3). The same word skaphê which Sophocles seems to have applied to the ark in which Pelias and Neleus were exposed, is applied by Plut. Romulus 3 to the ark in which Romulus and Remus were exposed. See C. Trieber, “Die Romulussage,” Rheinisches Museum, N.F. xliii. (1888), pp. 569-582.
155. Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 175, who seems to have copied Apollodorus.
156. Compare Hom. Od. 11.281ff.; Paus. 4.2.5.
157. See below, Apollod. 2.7.3, and compare Hom. Il. 11.690-693, with the Scholia; Ov. Met. 12.549ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 10. As to Periclymenus, see the verses of Hesiod quoted by the Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon. i.156, according to whom Periclymenus received from Poseidon the power of turning himself into an eagle, an ant, a bee, or a snake; but Herakles, so says the scholiast, killed him with a blow of his club when he had assumed the form of a fly. According to another account, it was in the form of a bee that Periclymenus was slain by Herakles (Eustathius on Hom. Od. xi.285, pp. 1685ff.; Scholiast on Hom. Il. ii.336). Ov. Met. 12.549ff. says that Herakles shot him in the shape of an eagle, and this version is followed by Hyginus, Fab. 10. Periclymenus is also reported to have been able to change himself into any animal or tree he pleased (Eustathius, on Hom. Od. xi.285, pp. 1685ff.; Scholiast on Hom. Od. xi.286).
158. According to Homer (Hom. Od. 3.452), the wife of Nestor was Eurydice, daughter of Clymenus.
159. Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 175.
160. Compare Hom. Od. 11.258ff.; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 175.
161. As to the mode in which Melampus learned the language of birds, and with it the art of divination, from serpents in return for the kindness which he had shown to their species, see Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon. i.118; compare Eustathius on Hom. Od. xi.292, p. 1685; Pliny, Nat. Hist. x.137. Helenus and Cassandra are said to have acquired their prophetic power in like manner. As children they were left overnight in a temple of Apollo, and in the morning serpents were found licking their ears. See Scholiast on Hom. Il. vii.44; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron, Introd. vol. i. pp. 266ff., ed. C. G. Müller. Polybius said that perhaps we and all men might have understood the language of all animals if a serpent had washed our ears (Porphyry, De abstinentia iii.4). In the folk-tales of many lands, men are said to have obtained a knowledge of the language of animals from serpents, either by eating the flesh of serpents or in other ways. See Frazer, “The Language of Animals,” The Archaeological Review, i. (1888), pp. 166ff.
162. The following romantic tale of the wooing of Pero is told also by the Scholiast on Hom. Od. xi.287. It is repeated also in substantially the same form by Eustathius on Hom. Od. 11.292, p. 1685. Compare Scholiast on Theocritus iii.43; Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon. i.118; Prop. ii.3.51ff. A summary of the story, shorn of its miraculous elements, is given by Homer (Hom. Od. 11.287-297, Hom. Od. 15.225-238) and Paus. 4.36.3). See Frazer's Appendix to Apollodorus, “Melampus and the kine of Phylacus.”
163. According to the Scholiast on Hom. Od. xi.287, 290 and Eustathius on Hom. Od. xi.292, p. 1685, the tree was not an oak but a