habitual interpreters of their will, the exponents of their wisdom, and the accredited channels of communication with them. The last and highest office was not sepa- rated from the rest till the rest had sunk into such secondary importance as to be intrusted to the ordinary' acolytes of "the schools of the prophets," or to other professional gentry. The progressive discrimination of the prophetic function is equally displayed in the proph- ets and in the divinities. The Father of gods and men is obscured in oracular eminence by his son Apollo, who becomes the special deity of plague and physic and music and song and prophecy. In the latest Hellenic ages Apollo is himself eclipsed b}' the deified mortals Amphiaraus and Amphllochus. Thus oraclc-mongering was not only withdrawn from the department of the general practitioner, but declined into the keeping of subordinate persons.
3. Attention will now be directed to this distinct phase of oracular manifestation, and will be concen- trated on those celebrated oracles of classical antiquity which alone ordinarily present themselves. All notice of the Sibyls and the Sibylline oracles will be deferred to a separate article, as, notwithstanding their superior interest and importance, they had an entirely distinct origin and character. See Sibyl and Sibyllikk Ora- cles.
The most ancient known oracle of Greece was that of Jupiter at Dodona, where communications were made from hollow oaks, or by the clatter of the sacred kettles suspended in the sacred grove. The answers, accord- ingh% were not direct, but conjectural, and were deter- mined by the arbitrary interpretations of the priests. Dodona is mentioned by Homer, once in the authentic text, and once in the Catalogue of the Ships; but in neither place does the oracle seem known to the poet. He does not seem to be acquainted with any oracular locality. With him the individual seer, directly in- spired by Apollo, is the depositary of the prophetic gift. This is a striking evidence of the great antiquity of the Homeric rhapsodies, for Dodona was certainly much more ancient than Delphi, and Delphi had reached or passed its zenith of eminence when Pindar wrote. The oracle of the Pythian Apollo, in a glen of Parnassus, was much the most famous of all the Hellenic seats of proph- ecy, and threw completely into the shade the Dodona-an Grove and the other oracles of Jupiter. The eclipse was probably due to migrations and changed relations among the Greek races, and may be plausibly connected with the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus. But the altered mode of transmitting the divine replies evinces a change of intellectual condition and an advance in civilit)'. At Delphi the prophetic medium was a female, called the Pj'thoness, who was thrown into convulsions and incoherent ejacidations by gases supposed to issue from crevices in the rock. These utterances were pro- fessedly taken down by the attendant priest, and deliv- ered to the postulants, originally, and usually in all peri- ods, in the form of hexameter verses, but occasionally in iambics after Athenian supremacy had disseminated At- tic fashions and an acquaintance with the Attic dialect.
Dodona and Delphi are the most noted of Greek ora- cles ; but they lead a long array of names of greater or lesser renown in both Greece and Italy, as well as in other lands reached by Greek influences or open to Greek in- terpretation. Nor is there any reason to suppose that even the names of all the oracles of temporary or local celebrity have been preserved. Besides the great oracle of .Jupiter at Dodona, there was one in Boeotia, one in Elis, and one of much brief fame in the sandy deserts of Libya — that of Jupiter Ammon, consulted by Lysander and by Alexander the Great. Apollo had a much longer list of oracular shrines — at Argos, at Corinth, at Laced*- mon, at Claros, at Branchidffi, at Antioch, at Patara, in Arcadia, in Cilicia, in Troas, at Baiae, and at many other places. Other divinities, both Dii Majores and Dii Mi- nores, had their seats of vaticination scattered through- out the Hellenic settlements and bevond them. Diana
ORACLES
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ORALE
had oracles at Ephesus, in Cilicia, and in Egypt. Juno gave comfort at Corinth, at Nysa, and elsewhere. Mi- nerva responded at MycensB, on Mount ^Etna, in Colchis, and in Spain. Saturn, Neptune, Pluto, Mars, Venus, Pan, Hercules, and yEsculapius, all kept offices for pro- phetic intelligence. Even inferior immortals shared in the publication of the secrets of Fate. Fortune deceived her suitors at Antium ; Castor and Pollux were in part- nership at Sparta; the Nymphs received anxious visit- ors at the Corycian Cave ; Machaon welcomed inquirers in Laconia ; Trophonius, at Lebadea ; Tiresias, at Or- chomenos. Ulysses, jMopsus, Aristaus, Sarpedon, Cal- chas, Amphiaraus, Autolycus, and many others, male and female, had establishments in various quarters. Car- menta and her sister CameniE had their cells of inspira- tion on the Capitoline HiU at Rome, and in the neigh- borhood. Faunus was consulted at Tibur, in Latium ; and near by was the grove of the oracular nymph Albu- nea — domus Albunece 7-esonantis. Both are commemo- rated in conjunction by Virgil, and the latter is noted as a tenth Sibyl by Lactantius, who states that her predic- tions (sortes) were deposited in the Capitol by the Roman Senate. But it would be tedious to extend the list still further, and impossible to complete it. The number of oracles multiplied as they became vulgarized and dis- credited. Their multitude furnished a poor compensa- tion for their loss of authority.