red oracles. She was
called Pythia from the god himself, who was styled Apollo Pythius, from
his slaying the serpent Python. The Priestess was to be a pure virgin.
She sat on the covercle or lid of a brazen vessel, mounted on a tripod,
and thence, after a violent enthusiasm, she delivered his oracles; i.e.
she rehearsed a few ambiguous and obscure verses, which were taken for
oracles.

[90] These words are but ill explained by the best Greek Lexicographers.
Servius ad Virg., Aen. vii. 88, says: _Incubare dicuntur proprie hic,
qui dormiunt accipienda responsa_. Tertullian de Anima, C. 49, thence
calls them _Incubatores fanorum_.

[91] Lib. XI. p. 108. Paris, fol. 1620.

[92] Ibid. lib. XVI. p. 761.

[93] De situ orbis, lib. I. cap. 1.

[94] Plutarch apud Agis et Cleomen. Cicero (de Div. 1. c. 48) probably
alludes to this oracle, when he says, that the Ephori of Sparta were
accustomed to sleep in the temple of Pasiphae on state emergencies.
There was a similar oracle in the neighbourhood of Thalame, not fur from
Aetylum, sacred to Ino.

[95] Strabo, lib. VI. p, 284.

[96] Pausanias, 1, 35.

[97] De vita Apoll. Thyan, 11. 37.

[98] Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 801. Anian. Exped. Alex, vii. 6.

[99] In Egypt lib. I, 25.

[100] Galen de comp. Med. p. Gen v. 2.

[101] Podalirius and Machaon, the two sons of Esculapius. The state of
medicine at the time of the Trojan war was very imperfect, as we find
exemplified by these two acting as surgeons general to the Grecian army.
Their simple practice consisted chiefly in extracting darts or arrows,
in staunching blood by some infusion of bitter herbs, and sometimes they
added charms or incantations; which seemed to be a poetical way of
hinting, that frequently wounds were healed or diseases cured in a
manner unaccountable by any known properties they could discover either
in the effects of their rude remedies, or in the then known powers of
the human body to relieve itself. In Homer's description of the wound
which Ulysses, when young, received in his thigh from the tusk of an
enraged wild boar, the infusion of blood was stopped by divine
incantations and divine songs, and some sort of bandage which must have
acted by pressure. If any virtue could have acted as a charm, the very
verse that describes the wound might have as good a right to such a
claim as any other; but, in what manner the surgeons of ancient Greece,
before the discovery of the circulation of the blood, migh