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As he passed, he saw Troy and her remains, venerable for the vicissitude of her fate, and for the birth of Rome: regaining the coast of Asia, he put in at Colophon, to consult there the oracle of the Clarian Apollo: it is no Pythoness that represents the God here, as at Delphos, but a Priest, one chosen from certain families, chiefly of Miletus; neither requires he more than just to hear the names and numbers of the querists, and then descends into the oracular cave; where, after a draught of water from a secret spring, though ignorant for the most part of letters and poetry, he yet utters his answers in verse, which has for its subject the conceptions and wishes of each consultant.
The Phocians refused obedience, and, encouraged by the Spartans, on whom a similar penalty had been imposed for their wrongful occupation of the Theban capital, they took up arms to resist the decree, and plundered the sacred Temple of Delphos to obtain means for carrying on the war.
When Camillus returned home, signalized by much more solid glory than when white horses had drawn him through the city, having vanquished the enemy by justice and good faith, the senate did not conceal their sense of respect for him, but immediately set about acquitting him of his vow; and Lucius Valerius, Lucius Sergius, Aulus Manlius, being sent in a ship of war as ambassadors to carry the golden bowl to Delphos as an offering to Apollo, were intercepted by the pirates of the Liparenses not far from the Sicilian Strait, and carried to Liparæ.
He desired him to produce a collection equal to that in the temple of Delphos, mentioned in the "Ion" of Euripides; where Hercules and his companion Iolaus, are represented in the act of killing the Lernaean hydra with golden sickles, kruseais harpais, where Bellerophon appears on his winged steed, vanquishing the fire-breathing chimera, tan puripneousan; and the war of the giants is described.
Earlier writers are in favour of the natural derivation of Chrysopolis, and assert that when the Senones lost their famous chief, the Brennus of Roman history, before Delphos, they built a town where Byzantium afterwards stood, and called it Bisantium and Chrysopolis, in memory of their city of those names at home.
They imitated the Jews also in this, namely, that as the most holy was dark and had no light, even so and after the same manner did they make their places dark where the devil made answer, as at Delphos and elsewhere. In such sort is the devil always God's ape.
There is, however, we are tolerably assured, a certain class of critics who venture to lament that this laughter-inspiring muse should have descended from the sunny Parnassus of its own vernacular to the meads below, where disport the unlearned and uninspired, the mere kids and lambs of its celestial audience: a generous absurdity, at which the very Devil of Delphos might have demurred.
The virtuoso showed me the chisel of Phidias, Claude's palette, and the brush of Apelles, observing that he intended to bestow the former either on Greenough, Crawford, or Powers, and the two latter upon Washington Allston. There was a small vase of oracular gas from Delphos, which I trust will be submitted to the scientific analysis of Professor Silliman.
The religion of Lacedaemon was governed by the kings, who were also high-priests, and officiated at the sacrifice; these had power to substitute their pythii, ambassadors, or nuncios, by which, not without concurrence of the Senate, they held intelligence with the oracle of Apollo at Delphos.
And now the Romans, despairing of human aid, began to look to the fates and the gods, when the deputies returned from Delphos, bringing with them an answer of the oracle, corresponding with the response of the captive prophet: "Roman, beware lest the Alban water be confined in the lake, beware of suffering it to flow into the sea in its own stream.
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