CHAPTER IV.
HISTORY OF ORACLES--THE PRINCIPAL ORACLES OF ANTIQUITY.
Few superstitions have been so famous, and so seductive to the minds of
men during a number of ages, as oracles. In treaties of peace or truces,
the Greeks never forgot to stipulate for the liberty of resorting to
oracles. No colony undertook new settlements, no war was declared, no
important affair begun, without first consulting the oracles.
The most renowned oracles were those of Delphos, Dodona, Trophonius,
Jupiter Hammon, and the Clarian Apollo. Some have attributed the oracles
of Dodona to oaks, others to pigeons. The opinion of those
pigeon-prophetesses was introduced by the equivocation of a Thessalian
word, which signified both a pigeon and a woman; and gave room to the
fable, that two pigeons having taken wing from Thebes, one of them fled
into Lybia, where it occasioned the establishing of the oracle of
Jupiter Hammon; and the other, having stopped in the oaks of the forest
of Dodona, informed the inhabitants of the neighbouring parts, that it
was Jupiter's intention there should be an oracle in that place.
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