Peile.
“With soft-wreathed wool, and precatory branch.”
These insignia of suppliants are familiar to every reader of the Classics. I shall only recall two of the most familiar instances. In the opening scene of the Iliad the priest of Apollo appears before Agamemnon, and
“In his hand he held the chaplet of the distant-darting Phœbus
On a golden rod.”
And in the opening lines of the Œdipus Tyrannus, the old King asks the Chorus—
“Why swarm ye here around the seats of the gods,
With branches furnished such as suppliants bear?”