The supplicant's
offices began with the offering up of a ram, on whose skin he laid
himself down, and in this situation, received the instruction he sought
for.[95] Amphilocus, a contemporary soothsayer, who accompanied the
Epigoni in the first Theban war, had a similar oracle at Mallos, in
Cilicia, which Pausanias asserts, even at the close of the second
century, to have been the most credible of his age; it is also mentioned
by Dion Cassius, in his history of Commodus.[96]
The most famous, however, of this class of oracles, was that of
Amphiaraus, the father of Amphilocus, which was one of the five
principal oracles of Greece; he had signalized himself as a sapient
soothsayer in the first Theban war; and his oracle was situated at
Oropos, on the borders of Boetia and Attica. Of all others this deserves
our most particular attention, as it was resorted to more frequently in
cases of infirmity and disease, than in any other circumstances. His
responses were always delivered in dreams, in whose interpretation, as
he was the first to possess that faculty.
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