d was issuing from the crevices, which produced an
extraordinary exhilaration on all who breathed it. Every thing
extraordinary was thought, in those days, to be supernatural and divine,
and the fame of this discovery was spread every where, the people
supposing that the effect produced upon the men and animals by breathing
the mysterious air was a divine inspiration. A temple was built over the
spot, priests and priestesses were installed, a city began to rise, and
in process of time Delphi became the most celebrated oracle in the
world; and as the vast treasures which had been accumulated there
consisted mainly of gifts and offerings consecrated to a divine and
sacred service, they were all understood to be under divine protection.
They were defended, it is true, in part by the inaccessibleness of the
position of Delphi, and by the artificial fortifications which had been
added from time to time to increase the security, but still more by the
feeling which every where prevailed, that any violence offered to such a
shrine would be punished by the gods as sacrilege. The account of the
manner in which Xerxes was repulsed, as related by the ancient
historians, is somewhat marvelous. We, however, in this case, as in all
others, transmit the story to our readers as the ancient historians give
it to us.

The main body of the army pursued its way directly southward toward the
city of Athens, which was now the great object at which Xerxes aimed. A
large detachment, however, separating from the main body, moved more to
the westward, toward Delphi. Their plan was to plunder the temples and
the city, and send the treasures to the king. The Delphians, on hearing
this, were seized with consternation. They made application themselves
to the oracle, to know what they were to do in respect to the sacred
treasures. They could not defend them, they said, against such a host,
and they inquired whether they should bury them in the earth, or attempt
to remove them to some distant place of safety.

The oracle replied that they were to do nothing at all in respect to the
sacred treasures. The divinity, it said, was able to protect what was
its own. They, on their part, had only to provide for themselves, their
wives, and their children.

On hearing this response, the people dismissed all care in respect to
the treasures of the temple and of the shrine, and made arrangements for
removing their families and their own effects to some place of