to be written down[39] and bear it back to him. Now what the other
Oracles prophesied is not by any reported, but at Delphi, so soon as
the Lydians entered the sanctuary of the temple[40] to consult the god
and asked that which they were commanded to ask, the Pythian
prophetess spoke thus in hexameter measure:

"But the number of sand I know,[41] and the measure of drops in the ocean;
The dumb man I understand, and I hear the speech of the speechless:
And there hath come to my soul the smell of a strong-shelled tortoise
Boiling in caldron of bronze, and the flesh of a lamb mingled with it;
Under it bronze is laid, it hath bronze as a clothing upon it."

48. When the Pythian prophetess had uttered this oracle, the Lydians
caused the prophecy to be written down, and went away at once to
Sardis. And when the rest also who had been sent round were there
arrived with the answers of the Oracles, then Crœsus unfolded the
writings one by one and looked upon them: and at first none of them
pleased him, but when he heard that from Delphi, forthwith he did
worship to the god and accepted the answer,[42] judging that the
Oracle at Delphi was the only true one, because it had found out what
he himself had done. For when he had sent to the several Oracles his
messengers to consult the gods, keeping well in mind the appointed day
he contrived the following device,--he thought of something which it
would be impossible to discover or to conceive of, and cutting up a
tortoise and a lamb he boiled them together himself in a caldron of
bronze, laying a cover of bronze over them. 49. This then was the
answer given to Crœsus from Delphi; and as regards the answer of
Amphiaraos, I cannot tell what he replied to the Lydians after they
had done the things customary in his temple,[43] for there is no
record of this any more than of the others, except only that Crœsus