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Plutarch gives us some further particulars. The description made by one of the characters he introduces speaks of visions caught by inhaling a stupefying gas. Under its influence hallucinations were produced in which Trophonios himself was thought to appear, and the tortures of Tartarus were revealed.
Those issuing from the cave for long after remained dejected, pale, and melancholy. Pausanius says that after a while one who had gone through the ordeal could laugh; but Suidas tells us that those who returned from having made the descent never smiled again, and this gave occasion to a saying relative to a preternaturally grave personage, "He has consulted the oracle of Trophonios."
That doubtless was the spot, and there, after the offering of sacrifices, Trophonios obligingly showed himself, and explained who he was and what were his powers. Since that time his oracle was much consulted, and happily an account of how he, or his priests, befooled visitors to the cave has been given us by Pausanius from his personal experience.
On issuing from the cave of Trophonios the priests lay hold of you, and after having planted you on the seat of Remembrance, question you as to what you have seen and heard. When you have told them, they hand you over, overwhelmed with fear, and unrecognisable by yourself and others, to other ministers who convey you to the edifice dedicated to the Good Genius and to Fortune."
Evemerus had seen their tombs. One should not believe him. Their parapets are dimmer, perhaps, but from them still they lean and laugh. They are immortal as the hexameters in which their loves unfold. Yet, oddly enough, presently the oracle of Delphi strangled. In his cavern Trophonios was gagged. The voice of Mopsos withered. That is nothing.
The reply received was that they must refer themselves to Trophonios at home. But who was the party? The Beotians had never heard of him. Then the oldest of their deputies recalled having once pursued a swarm of bees and followed it till it disappeared in a cave.
The most remarkable representative in the Middle Ages of the cave of Trophonios was that in Lough Derg in Ireland, the purgatory of S. Patrick as it was called. The origin is obscure, but it sprang into notoriety through the publication by a monk, Henry of Saltrey, of the descent of a knight Owain into it. Owain had been in the service of King Stephen, and he made his descent in the year 1153.
Scarcely one in a million even guesses that it exists; of those who do, ninety-nine in a hundred turn from it in horror; of the remaining score of those who face it in a whole generation of men, more than half perish in mind or body; the last ten, perhaps, win through, and these are they that have understood the writing over the temple door, the great 'Know thyself, the precept of the Delphic Oracle and of all mystics before Trophonios and since.
There were the oracles of Delphi, of Trophonios and of Mopsos, where one might converse with any divinity, even with Pan, who was a very great god. But Olympos was neighbourly. It was charming too.
The Manteion is a gallery, naturally bored in the rock. The winds that penetrate it cause strange pipings and hollow moans, that served as an accompaniment to the oracles. But the most remarkable of these caverns was that of Trophonios in Beotia. Pausanius tells us the legend of its origin. The Beotians had suffered from drought for two years and sent to consult the oracle of Delphi.
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