e sent to make trial of the Oracles he gave
charge as follows,--that from the day on which they set out from Sardis
they should reckon up the number of the days following and on the
hundredth day they should consult the Oracles, asking what Croesus
the son of Alyattes king of the Lydians chanced then to be doing: and
whatever the Oracles severally should prophesy, this they should cause
to be written down 39 and bear it back to him. Now what the other
Oracles prophesied is not by any reported, but at Delphi, so soon as the
Lydians entered the sanctuary of the temple 40 to consult the god and
asked that which they were commanded to ask, the Pythian prophetess
spoke thus in hexameter measure:

"But the number of sand I know, 41 and the measure of drops in the ocean;
The dumb man I understand, and I hear the speech of the speechless:
And there hath come to my soul the smell of a strong-shelled tortoise
Boiling in caldron of bronze, and the flesh of a lamb mingled with it;
Under it bronze is laid, it hath bronze as a clothing upon it."

48. When the Pythian prophetess had uttered this oracle, the Lydians
caused the prophecy to be written down, and went away at once to Sardis.
And when the rest also who had been sent round were there arrived with
the answers of the Oracles, then Croesus unfolded the writings one by
one and looked upon them: and at first none of them pleased him, but
when he heard that from Delphi, forthwith he did worship to the god and
accepted the answer, 42 judging that the Oracle at Delphi was the only
true one, because it had found out what he himself had done. For when he
had sent to the several Oracles his messengers to consult the gods,
keeping well in mind the appointed day he contrived the following
device,--he thought of something which it would be impossible to discover
or to conceive of, and cutting up a tortoise and a lamb he boiled them
together himself in a caldron of bronze, laying a cover of bronze over
them.

49. This then was the answer given to Croesus from Delphi; and as
regards the answer of Amphiaraos, I cannot tell what he replied to the
Lydians after they had done the things customary in his temple, 43 for
there is no record of this any more than of the others, except only that
Croesus thought that he also 44 possessed a true Oracle.

50. After this with great sacrifices he endeavoured to win the favour of
the god at Delphi: for of all the animals that are fit for sacr