the seat of the vapours. After a time, her figure enlarged itself, her
hair stood on end, her complexion and features became altered, her
heart panted and her bosom swelled, and her voice grew more than
human. In this condition she uttered a number of wild and incoherent
phrases, which were supposed to be dictated by the God. The questions
which were offered by those who came to consult the oracle were then
proposed to her, and her answers taken down by the priest, whose
office was to arrange and methodize them, and put them into hexameter
verse, after which they were delivered to the votaries. The priestess
could only be consulted on one day in every month.

Great ingenuity and contrivance were no doubt required to uphold the
credit of the oracle; and no less boldness and self-collectedness on
the part of those by whom the machinery was conducted. Like the
conjurors of modern times, they took care to be extensively informed
as to all such matters respecting which the oracle was likely to be
consulted. They listened probably to the Pythia with a superstitious
reverence for the incoherent sentences she uttered. She, like them,
spent her life in being trained for the office to which she was
devoted. All that was rambling and inapplicable in her wild
declamation they consigned to oblivion. Whatever seemed to bear on the
question proposed they preserved. The persons by whom the responses
were digested into hexameter verse, had of course a commission
attended with great discretionary power. They, as Horace remarks on
another occasion, [2] divided what it was judicious to say, from what
it was prudent to omit, dwelt upon one thing, and slurred over and
accommodated another, just as would best suit the purpose they had in
hand. Beside this, for the most part they clothed the apparent meaning
of the oracle in obscurity, and often devised sentences of ambiguous
interpretation, that might suit with opposite issues, whichever might