Olivier ou palmier ? Iconographie et appropriation athénienne de la plante sacrée de l’accouchement de Léto

Abstract

The oldest Greek sources narrate how Leto at the time of childbirth held on to a palm tree on the island of Delos to help herself with the effort of contractions. Under this palm tree, the god Apollo was born, making it an element of sacred worship of which the ancients said that it never died. Despite the clarity of the sources in the plant identification from the 5th century BC onwards, we can observe an attempt to appropriate the sacred tree of Leto’s childbirth that is made manifest through written and visual sources. Thus, the olive tree or the image of Athena began to appear as protagonists of the myth. They began to oversee the birth of the god Apollo. This iconographic manipulation had a single purpose: to justify, through religion, the economic and political control of a key commercial centre in the Greek world.