g priesthood in the temples of pagan worship. They were quick to
take advantage of a discovery that offered so powerful a leverage, and
having once secured its services, they did not scruple to shape the
utterances to suit their own selfish ends. Frequently their answers were
so framed as to admit of a double interpretation.

Croesus consulted the oracle of Delphi on the success that would
attend his invasion of the Medes. He was told that by passing the river
Halys a great empire would be ruined. He crossed, and the fall of his
own empire fulfilled the prophecy. Sometimes they were couched in vague
and mysterious terms, leaving those who solicited advice to put whatever
construction upon them their hopes or fears suggested. Compare, for
example, the first specimen of writing given in this article with the
descriptions we read in ancient history of the utterances of the Delphic
oracle. How vague and indefinite are its warnings! and then the
continual recurrence of the solemn admonition, "Hope and trust"--does it
not seem prophetic of some evil hour, when all one's hope and faith were
to be tried to the utmost?

Suppose these words had been addressed to a superstitious person by the
priestess of a temple situated in the deep recesses of a dense forest,
among the toppling crags of some lofty mountain range, or near the
gloomy habitations of the dead: it could not have failed of making a
serious impression upon the mind. It was thus that the pagan priesthood
threw about their oracles everything that could inspire the mind of the
visitor with a sense of awe. We are told that the "sacred tripod" was
placed over the mouth of a cave whence proceeded a peculiar exhalation.

On this tripod sat the Pythia--the priestess of Apollo--who, having
caught the inspiration, pronounced her oracles in extempore prose or
verse. The cave and the exhalations were mere accessories, stage
properties as it were, the more readily to impose upon those who came
to consult the oracle. So of the "sacred tripod," which was the symbol
merely of the real instrument which had given birth to this system of
fraud.

Planchette, the "sacred tripod" of the ancients, uses language of
various styles. Sometimes it will not deign to speak at all; sometimes
its answers are vague and unmeaning; sometimes singularly concise and
pertinent.

A very striking point of similarity is the occasional irrelevancy of the
answers. Tisamenus, soothsayer to the Greek army,