"If, then, a fire be lighted on the altar, the internal air will be
dilated and will enter the pedestal and drive out the water contained in
it. But the latter, having no other exit than the tube, e [Lambda], will
rise into the cup, and so the statue will make a libation. This will
last as long as the fire does. On extinguishing the fire the libation
ceases, and occurs anew as often as the fire is relighted.

"It is necessary that the tube through which the heat is to introduce
itself shall be wider in the middle; and it is necessary, in fact, that
the heat, or rather that the draught that it produces, shall accumulate
in an inflation in order to have more effect."

According to Father Kircher (_l. c._), an author whom he calls Bitho
reports that there was at Sais a temple of Minerva in which there was an
altar on which, when a fire was lighted, Dyonysos and Artemis (Bacchus
and Diana) poured milk and wine, while a dragon hissed.

It is easy to conceive of the modification to be introduced into the
apparatus above described by Heron, in order to cause the outflow of
milk from one side and of wine from the other.

After having indicated it, Father Kircher adds: "It is thus that Bacchus
and Diana appeared to pour, one of them wine, and the other milk, and
that the dragon seemed to applaud their action by hisses. As the people
who were present at the spectacle did not see what was going on within,
it is not astonishing that they believed it due to divine intervention.
We know, in fact, that Osiris or Bacchus was considered as the
discoverer of the vine and of milk; that Iris was the genius of the
waters of the Nile; and that the Serpent, or good genius, was the first