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"Were not the last words of the Pythia?" 'Then shall the lingering boat to the beckoning meadows convey thee, Which to the wandering foot peace and a home will afford? "Can you misunderstand their meaning? They speak of Charon's lingering boat, which will convey you to your last home, to the one great resting- place for all wanderers the kingdom of Hades." "Yes, my friend, you are right there.
Guelfs and Ghibellines alike interrogated the oracle, with perfect will to obey its inspiration for the common good; but they read the utterances of the Pythia in adverse senses.
But still you discover the terraces once crowded by fans still, amid gloomy chasms, bubbles the Castalian spring and yet permitted to the pilgrim's gaze is the rocky bath of the Pythia, and the lofty halls of the Corycian Cave. IX. Beyond Phocis lies the country of the Locrians, divided into three tribes independent of each other the Locri Ozolae, the Locri Opuntii, the Locri Epicnemidii.
And hence, as I divine, the startling whirl of incongruous juxtaposition, which of a truth must to many readers seem as amazing as if the Pythia on the tripod should have struck up a drinking-song, or Thersites had caught the prophetic strain of Cassandra.
"The Pythia is a wise woman, who lives in the temple. When anybody asks her a hard question, she takes a three-legged stool, called a tripod, and sets it over the crevice in the floor. Then she sits on the stool and breathes the strange odor; and instead of losing her senses as other people would do, she talks with Apollo; and Apollo tells her how to answer the question.
With such means, it would have been not a little singular if the priests of Aesculapius had failed in converting the popular veneration to his credit and their own emolument. She was called Pythia from the god himself, who was styled Apollo Pythius, from his slaying the serpent Python. The Priestess was to be a pure virgin.
There was still practised by the morning newspapers the dear old farce of purporting to forecast the unknown. On the morning that opens the new Session there appears in all well-conducted morning papers an article delivered in the style of the Priestess Pythia in the temple at Delphi.
Well, the Pythia, as this female was termed, warmed up her understanding over this hole, as you have seen ladies do over the register of a hot-air furnace, and becoming excited, she presently began to be drunk or crazy, and in her fit she gabbled forth some words or noises. These the priests took down, and then told the customer that the noises meant so-and-so!
Melitta wanted to enquire of the Oracle whether you would remain faithful; and to question an old woman who has just come from Phrygia and can conjure by night from drawn cords, with incense, styrax, moon-shaped cakes, and wild-briar leaves; but I would have none of this, for my heart knows better than the Pythia, the cords, or the smoke of sacrifice, that you will be true to me, and love me always."
The idea then comes into his head that the public shall be his Pythia, and that the public shall decide whether she should have the tailor or the watchman.
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