It is not a woman that delivers
the oracle there, as at Delphos, but a man chosen out of certain
families, and always of Miletum. It is sufficient to tell him the number
and names of those who come to consult him; whereupon he retires into a
grot, and having taken some water out of a well that lies hid in it, he
answers you in verses to whatever you have thought of, though this man
is often very ignorant.
Dion Cassius explains the manner in which the oracle of Nymphoea, in
Epirus, delivered its responses. The party that consulted took incense,
and having prayed, threw the incense into the fire, the flame pursued
and consumed it. But if the affair was not to succeed, the incense did
not come near the fire, or if it fell into the flame, it started out and
fled. It so happened for prognosticating futurity, in regard to every
thing that was asked, except death and marriage, about which it was not
allowed to ask any questions.
Those who consulted the oracle of Amphiarus, lay on the skins of
victims, and received the answer of the oracle in a dream. Virgil
attests the same thing of the oracle of Faunus in Italy.
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