" Plato relates, that the two brothers, Agamedes and
Trophonius, having built the temple of Apollo, and asked the god for a
reward what he thought of most advantage to men, both died in the night
that succeeded their prayer. Pausanias gives us a quite different
account. In the palace there built for the King Hyrieus, they so laid a
stone, that it might be taken away, and in the night they crept in
through the hole they had thus contrived, to steal the king's treasures.
The king observing the quantity of his gold diminished, though no locks
nor seals had been broken open, fixed traps about his coffers, and
Agamedes being caught in one of them, Trophonius cut off his head to
prevent his discovering him. Trophonius having disappeared that moment,
it was given out that the earth had swallowed him on the same spot; and
impious superstition went so far as to place this wicked wretch in the
rank of the gods, and to consult his oracle with ceremonies equally
painful and mysterious.
Tacitus thus speaks of the oracle of the Clarian Apollo: Germanicus
went to consult the oracle of Claros.
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