e same blood and language
and religion. Though widely separated politically and engaged in endless
wars among themselves, the chief bond of union known to them was the
common cult of some divinity and participation in the same religious
festivals. The oracles, the temples, the games, the processions in honor
of their gods, tended to maintain the unity of Greece and were the
promoters of national sentiment. Woman's part in these bonds of union
made her influential in the welfare of the common country, and religious
ceremonies were to her occasions in which she could feel herself an
essential factor in Greek life.

In the childhood of the world, man, who reached conclusions by a long
process of reasoning, stood in awe of the intuitive faculty in woman
that enabled her to arrive at a truth without apparent effort. Hence the
spirit of divination was thought to be inherent in the sex, and women
were prophetesses from remote ages. Among pagan peoples, the earliest
manifestations of the prophetic instinct in woman were recognized in the
persons of certain seers to whom was given the name of Sibyls. The word
in its etymology signifies the "will of God," and was applied to the
inspired prophetesses of some deity, chiefly of Apollo. The Sibyls were
generally represented as maidens, dwelling in lonely caverns or by
sacred springs, who were possessed of the spirit of divination and gave
forth prophetic utterances while under the influence of enthusiastic
frenzy. Their number, their names, their countries, their times, are
matters about which we have no certain knowledge; but twelve are
mentioned by ancient writers, of whom three were certainly Greek--the
Delphian, the Erythrean, and the Samian. Herophila, the Erythrean Sibyl,
was the most celebrated of them all, and she is represented as wandering
from her Ionian home, by manifold journeyings, to Cumae, in Magna Graecia,
whence she became known as the Cumaean Sibyl. She it was whom AEneas
consulted before his descent into Hades, and who later sold to the last
Tarquin the prophetic books. It was believed that her age reached a
thousand years.

Women also were priestesses at the oracles of Hellas, which were seats
of the worship of certain divinities, where prophecies were imparted to
inquiring souls through the instrumentality of the attendants of the
deity. The oldest and most venerated of the oracles was that of Zeus at
Dodona, mentioned by Homer. Here, among the prophetic oaks,