V. 15.

SOURCES OF THE BELIEF IN ORACLES. 163
Barvas, of the Billhs, in Hindostan, exdte their minds by sacred songs and instrumental musici during whidi they are seized with a kind of frenzy, attended with ex- travagant gestures, and end by giving utterance to what are regarded as oracles. The Barvas receive disciples, and after some preparatory ceremonies, subject them to a kind of musical ordeal. Such as are not moved by it to the borders of ecstatic frenzy, are immediately rejected, as incapable of being the redpients of divine inspiration. ''^
Unless the mind is excited, there can be no belief in oracles; and to produce this in the auditor, the excitement must be experienced by the utterer. In the temples of Greece and those of Asia, besides the use of flutes^ of cymbals, or of trumpets, more powerful agents yrere summoned, when heavraly interpretations were to be delivered.
When a dream was the chosen mode of revelation, the youngest and most simple persons were selected as best adapted to succeed in this divination; and they were assisted in it by magical invocations, and by the incense of particular perfiimes.f Porphyry acknow- ledges that such processes are calculated to inflame the imagination, and lamblichus expresses the same opinion in different words, asserting that such preparations ren- der a man worthy of approaching the Divinity.
At Didyma,{ jH'evious to prophesying, the priestess of
* Nwvelles Anndks de8 Voyages, tome xxvii. pages 333*-334.
t lamblichus, de Mysteriis, cap. xxix.
t A place near Miletas, where the Branchidse, a family who were the hereditary priests of the Temple of Apollo Didymseus, held their isracle.— E©.
M 2
164 SILENCE OF THE DELPHIAN ORACLE.
the oracle of Branchides inhaled for some time the vapour of a sacred fountain.* The oracle of the Colo- phonians, at Claros, was delivered by a priest, who pre- pared himself by drinking the water of a basin inclosed in the grotto of Apollo. This beverage is said to have shortened his days.t It is well known in how strange a manner the Pythia was exposed to the vapour exhaled from the cavern of Delphi.} Kndar and Plutarch assure us, that the escape of the sacred vapour was accom- panied by a sweet odour, which penetrated even to the cell, where those who came to consult awaited the responses of the oracle.^ Whether natural perfumes were combined with the physical agents, or that the priests ^ught with the assistance of artificial perfumes to conceal the foetid odour of the gas which issued from the cavern, cannot now be determined. But, after a time, the Pythia ceased to answer ; the exhalations, also, at length ceased ; and owiiig to that cessation, the contemporaries of Cicero accounted for the silence of the oracle. Cicero rejects this explanation with contempt ; and, theologically speaking, it was absurd, but quite admissible as a physical reason for the silence of the orade.U Centuries later, Por-
* lamblichus, de Mysteriis, cap. xxv.
t Bibentium breviore vitd, — Plin. Hist, Nat, lib. ii. cap. cv. lamblich. de Myst. cap. xxv.
X S. Johan. Chrysost. Homelia, xxix. super cap. xii. Epist. i. ad CorifUh.
§ Pindar. Olym, vii. ver. 59. — Plutarch, de Oracul, defect,
II Cicer. de Divinat. lib. ii. The original temple, if it could be called such, at Delphi, was a hut made of boughs of laurel ; but it afterwards became a splendid edifice. It was three times destroyed by the accidents of war and of fire, and three times rebuilt. The
SILENCE OF THE DELPHIAN ORACLE. 165
phyry^ unhesitatingly afiirms that the exhalations of the earth, and the water of certain fountains, tended to excite divine ecstacies, in the midst of which the oracles were delivered. Inebriated with the gas that exuded beneath the sacred tripod, the Delphic priestess fell into a ner- vous, convulsive, and ecstatic state, against which she might struggle without being able to regain her self- possession. Whilst out of her senses, and under the sway of an over-excited imagination, she uttered some words, or mysterious phrases, from which it was the priest's care to extract the revelations of the foture.f All this is as natural as the sinking languor which suc- ceeded this excessive disorder of body and mind, and which sooner or later proved mortal.
We may thus see, that it is in vain to follow the history of miracles and of prodigies, or to think of examining separately what appertains to the history of
response&were at first delivered in verse, but on some one remark- ing that Apollo was the worst versifier in Greece, they were afterwards delivered in prose. The tripod on which the Pythia sat, is j9till in existence at Constantinople, where it was carried by. Constantine ; but the hollow column on which it stood, remains in the cavern. — ^Ed.
* Euseh, Proep. evangel.
t The tripod was placed over the mouth of the cavern, whence issued the vapour, which was supposed to be carbonic acid gas ; but that is not sufficiently intoxicating ; and I suspect the gas was sulphurous acid, as it caused almost frantic delirium, as already mentioned (note, p. 154). The secondary eiFects of this gas are also similar to those experienced by the Delphic priestess, namely, vertigo, nausea, and great weakness of the lower extre- mities. The Piachi, or Mexican priests, uttered their responses, or oracles when drunk with the fumes of tobacco, wliich, on these occasions, was thrown upon the fire of the altar, and the fumes inhaled by the priests. — Eoi
166 SOURCES OF SOME ORACLES.
ancient science. When the priest of Claros was affected by a beverage destructive to his health, when the priestess of the Branchides, and the Delphic Pythia, exposed themselves to gaseous exhalations, the power of which was augmented by other physical agents ; when the pro- phetesses of Germany, rapt in contemplation, sat immo- veable on the borders of torrents; when the Barvas abandoned themselves to the power of music, whose influence over them was fostered by their reli^ous edu- cation, no results, in all these cases, could be more natu- ral than the dreams, the delirium, the intoxication, the vertigo, and the frantic excitement, that were consequent on their proceedings. The subsequent inspiration, or rather the oracles attributed to it, were but the impos- tures of priestcraft ; but science presided over their craft, and regulated the causes of the vertigo, and of the frenzy, and pointed to the advantages to be derived from them by the Thaumaturgists.
Simple observations, which require nothing beyond common reflection, and which we scarcely venture to range \mder the head of science, have also been the foundation of oracles. Instructed by general laws, the priest was able to risk a prediction respect- ing the soil and the climate of a coimtry, by consulting the entrails of particular victims. The science of the Auspices, and of the Augurs, was also founded on obser- vations appertaming to physics, to meteorology, or to natural history.
In Livonia and in Esthonia, a religious opinion, ante- rior to the establishment of Christianity,* forbad the
* Debray, Sur les prijug48 et id^es superstitieuses des Livoniens, Lettof&ens et Esthomens. — Nouvelles Annates des Voyages, tome xviii. page 114.
SOURCES OP SOME ORACLES. 167
agriculturist to destroy by fire the crickets (GryUus do- mesticus) that he should find in his habitation ; as those insects which the crickets kill would tear his clothes and his linen to pieces. When about to build a house, he was directed to observe what species of ant showed itself first at the appointed place. The appearance of the gre?A favmrcohured ant, or the black ant, was regarded as painting out the spot as a favourable dte ; but should the small red ant appear, another spot was to be selected. This precaution was proper, as this little insect makes the greatest havoc in the provisions and stores of man, while the two former species, by preying upon the latter, nece&- sarily put an end to its ravages. - In the same manner, the cricket devours other insects ; and it is espedaUy de- structive of ants ; a fact which has entitled it to consider- ation, and in many countries rendered it a sacred insect. There is no difficulty in predicting to the man who destroys them, that he will suffer from the ravages of those insects of which it is the natural enemy.
From infancy, Nsevius announced his fiiture talent for the profession of an augur. In order to obtain a fine bunch of grapes, as an offering to the Gods, he consulted the birds with as much success as sagacity :* he knew that by frequenting the spot where the grapes were ripe and abundant, their preference should lead him to the object of his search. A similar proof of juvenile sagacity was exhibited in our times. Gassendi, directing the atten- tion of his school-fellows to the sky, as they stood under a tree, proved to them that the clouds, driven rapidly by the wind, moved over their heads, and not the moon,
* Dionys, Halic. lib. iii. cap. xxi— lvi.
168 MEANS EMPLOYED TO IMPOSE ON CREDULITY.
although she appeared the moving object. In the days of orades we should have beheld in him an embryo prophet.
The Thaumaturgist has always proposed to himself one great end ; and, in order to attain it, he has not scrupled to make use of all means indifferently, whether charlatanism, tricks, allegories, natiural phenomena, ob- servations, reasoning, or true science. But of all the means employed, perhaps the most powerful, at least that which increased the efficacy of all the rest, was the inviolable secresy which, by general consent, concealed his operations. To envelop events in the veil of mystery,* said the sages themselves, serves to raise veneration for those divinities, whose nature eludes the senses of man.
* Mystica sacrorum occultatio majeatatem numini conciliat, imitans ejus naturam effugientem sensus no^fro^.— Strabo. lib. x.
SAFEGUAKDS OF ANCIENT MYSTERIES. 169