she died soon after.


CEREMONIES PRACTISED ON CONSULTING ORACLES.

Pausanias describes the ceremonies that were practiced for consulting
the oracle of Trophonius. Every man that went down into his cave, never
laughed his whole life after. This gave occasion to the proverbial
saying concerning those of a melancholy air: "He has consulted
Trophonius." Plato relates, that the two brothers, Agamedes and
Trophonius, having built the temple of Apollo, and asked the god for a
reward what he thought of most advantage to men, both died in the night
that succeeded their prayer. Pausanias gives us a quite different
account. In the palace there built for the King Hyrieus, they so laid a
stone, that it might be taken away, and in the night they crept in
through the hole they had thus contrived, to steal the king's treasures.
The king observing the quantity of his gold diminished, though no locks
nor seals had been broken open, fixed traps about his coffers, and
Agamedes being caught in one of them, Trophonius cut off his head to
prevent his discovering him. 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.

Tacitus thus speaks of the oracle of the Clarian Apollo: Germanicus
went to consult the oracle of Claros. It is not a woman that delivers
the oracle there, as at Delphos, but a man chosen out of certain
families, and always of Miletum. It is sufficient to tell him the number
and names of those who come to consult him; whereupon he retires into a