ented as just at that
time recovering from the affliction arising out of the death of his son.

To ask advice of the oracle, before he took any final decision, was a
step which no pious king would omit. But in the present perilous
question, Croesus did more--he took a precaution so extreme, that if his
piety had not been placed beyond all doubt by his extraordinary
munificence to the temples, he might have drawn upon himself the
suspicion of a guilty scepticism. Before he would send to ask advice
respecting the project itself, he resolved to test the credit of some of
the chief surrounding oracles--Delphi, Dodona, Branchidae near Miletus,
Amphiaraus at Thebes, Trophonius at Labadeia, and Ammon in Libya. His
envoys started from Sardis on the same day, and were all directed on the
hundredth day afterward to ask at the respective oracles how Croesus was
at that precise moment employed. This was a severe trial: of the manner
in which it was met by four out of the six oracles consulted we have no
information, and it rather appears that their answers were
unsatisfactory. But Amphiaraus maintained his credit undiminished, while
Apollo at Delphi, more omniscient than Apollo at Branchidae, solved the
question with such unerring precision, as to afford a strong additional
argument against persons who might be disposed to scoff at divination.
No sooner had the envoys put the question to the Delphian priestess, on
the day named, "What is Croesus now doing?" than she exclaimed in the
accustomed hexameter verse, "I know the number of grains of sand, and
the measures of the sea: I understand the dumb, and I hear the man who
speaks not. The smell reaches me of a hard-skinned tortoise boiled in a
copper with lamb's flesh--copper above and copper below." Croesus was
awe-struck on receiving this reply. It described with the utmost detail
that which he had been really doing, so that he accounted the Delphian
oracle and that of Amphiaraus the only trustworthy oracles on
earth--following up these feelings with a holocaust of the most
munificent character, in order to win the favor of the Delphian god.
Three thousand cattle were offered up, and upon a vast sacrificial pile
were placed the most splendid purple robes and tunics, together with
couches and censers of gold and silver; besides which he sent to Delphi
itself the richest presents in gold and silver--statues, bowls, jugs,
etc., the size and weight of which we read with astonishment; th