DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1755#0406
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THE LOVERS' LEAP.
SANTA MAERA, FROM THE COAST OF EP1RV9.
ships. Above it stood, visible from afar, the "Apollo dreaded by sailors,
who was regarded with peculiar veneration by the mariner of the Ionian Sea.
It is remarkable, that the uses for which this rock was originally employed
were religious and judicial. In critical times, slaves and criminals were thrown
from its suinmit as an expiatory sacrifice: it seems also to have served as an
ordeal by which the guilt or innocence of an accused party might be detei-
mined. In some instances, the priests of Apollo's temple above it offered
themselves as victims; though upon these occasions it is said that care was
taken to buoy them up by live birds and artificial pinions in their descent,
which was thus broken and made easy, and that so they were enabled to
repeat the experiment at different times, and to increase the number of similar
THE LOVERS' LEAP.
SANTA MAERA, FROM THE COAST OF EP1RV9.
ships. Above it stood, visible from afar, the "Apollo dreaded by sailors,
who was regarded with peculiar veneration by the mariner of the Ionian Sea.
It is remarkable, that the uses for which this rock was originally employed
were religious and judicial. In critical times, slaves and criminals were thrown
from its suinmit as an expiatory sacrifice: it seems also to have served as an
ordeal by which the guilt or innocence of an accused party might be detei-
mined. In some instances, the priests of Apollo's temple above it offered
themselves as victims; though upon these occasions it is said that care was
taken to buoy them up by live birds and artificial pinions in their descent,
which was thus broken and made easy, and that so they were enabled to
repeat the experiment at different times, and to increase the number of similar