ἱστορίαι Historiai
Hdt. 2.52 The Histories, Herodotus; served verbatim
Formerly, in all their sacrifices, the Pelasgians called upon gods without giving name or appellation to any (I know this, because I was told at Dodona ); for as yet they had not heard of such. They called them gods from the fact that, besides setting everything in order, they maintained all the dispositions. Then, after a long while, first they learned the names of the rest of the gods, which came to them from Egypt , and, much later, the name of Dionysus; and presently they asked the oracle at Dodona about the names; for this place of divination, held to be the most ancient in Hellas , was at that time the only one. When the Pelasgians, then, asked at Dodona whether they should adopt the names that had come from foreign parts, the oracle told them to use the names. From that time onwards they used the names of the gods in their sacrifices; and the Greeks received these later from the Pelasgians.

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

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The Histories, Herodotus — translated by A. D. Godley, 1920–25
Perseus Digital Library — Herodotus, The Histories (Godley translation) · A. D. Godley, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press / William Heinemann, 1920–25
license: public-domain (US: pre-1930 publication); Perseus digital edition CC BY-SA 4.0, attribution recorded in ops/corpus-staging/SOURCES.md