Divisions of divination by the ancientsprodigies, etc. CHAPTER IV. History of OraclesThe principal oracles of antiquity.

At forty, she was still the wealthiest unmarried princess in Europe; fastidious in toilette, stainless in reputation, not lovely in temper, rigid in etiquette, learned in precedence, an oracle in court traditions, a terror to the young maids-of-honor, and always quarrelling with her own sisters, younger, fairer, poorer than herself.

Amphilocus, a contemporary soothsayer, who accompanied the Epigoni in the first Theban war, had a similar oracle at Mallos, in Cilicia, which Pausanias asserts, even at the close of the second century, to have been the most credible of his age; it is also mentioned by Dion Cassius, in his history of Commodus.

HISTORY OF ORACLESTHE PRINCIPAL ORACLES OF ANTIQUITY.

As a divine oracle to us, his voice is silent; ay, his august voice is drowned by the discordant and contradictory opinions that are ever blended with the speculations of the schools.

Trophonius having disappeared that moment, it was given out that the earth had swallowed him on the same spot; and impious superstition went so far as to place this wicked wretch in the rank of the gods, and to consult his oracle with ceremonies equally painful and mysterious.

" Eusebius has preserved some fragments of this criticism on oracles by Oenomanus.

But his intellect was as remarkable as his piety, and his monastery became not only a model of monastic life, to which flocked men from all parts of Europe to study its rules, but the ascetic abbot himself became an oracle on all the questions of the day.

Pomponius Mela even mentions a savage nation, in the interior of Africa, who laid themselves down to sleep on the grave-stones of their ancestors, and looked upon the dreams they had on those spots as oracles from the dead.

But Oenomanus is still more out of humour with the oracle for the answer which Apollo gave the Athenians, when Xerxes was about to attack Greece with all the strength of Asia.

He was a kind of oracle among the poor folk of the neighbourhood.

Cicero is a greater oracle than Saint Augustine.

The same judgments may be passed on oracles as on possessions.

Such was the treatment accorded unhappy Alexandria by the Ausonian Beast, as the tag of the oracle about him called him; and he said he liked the title and was glad to be distinguished by the honorific appellation of "Beast."

"Capper is no oracle out of his own sphere.

My mother was my oracle during the first six years of childhood, resolving my difficulties and answering my questions.

"With all their poetry," he argues, "and all their usefulness, we can hardly feel astonished that the primitive races of mankind should have considered trees as the choicest gifts of the gods to men, and should have believed that their spirits still delighted to dwell among their branches, or spoke oracles through the rustling of their leaves."

" "The other way is to apply to his attorney and adviser, Señor Pasta, the oracle before whom Don Custodio bows.

He was an oracle until the revival of learning.

The very same Idol deliuers oracles vnto them, and sometimes requireth the blood of fourtie virgins for his hire.

Shanty was a sort of oracle amongst his simple neighbours, and what he said was not often disputed to his face; nevertheless, there was not an individual on the moor who knew Tamar, who did not believe her to be a princess in disguise or something very wonderful; and, at the bottom of her heart, poor Tamar still indulged this same belief, though she did not now, as formerly express it.

Failing in this coup d'essai, she would not simply disappoint many a beating heart in the glittering crowd that on different motives yearned for her success, but she would ruin herselfand, as the oracle within had told her, would ruin France.

Every one has heard of the Famous Conjurer, who, according to the Opinion of the Vulgar, has studied himself dumb; for which Reason, as it is believed, he delivers out all his Oracles in Writing.

Either Amphiaraos, during the attack of the first Seven against Thebes, saw by prophetic vision the future battle of the second Seven, the Epigonoi, among whom were his own son Alkmaion, and Adrastos, the sole survivor of the first Seven; or else these are the words of his oracle after his death, spoken when the battle of the Epigonoi had begun but was not yet ended.

In short, we cannot build up a system of Oracles on a basis of Free Criticism.