Histories

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