know, Apollo's priest. Now it is not to be imagined that he thought the God he served a Cacodæmon, or, as we call him, a devil. Nothing could be further from the opinion and practice of this holy philosopher than so gross an impiety. The story of the Pythias, or priestess of Apollo, which he relates immediately before the ending of that treatise, concerning the Cessation of Oracles, confirms my assertion rather than shakes it; for 'tis there delivered, 'That going with great reluctation into the sacred place to be inspired, she came out foaming at the mouth, her eyes goggling, her breast heaving, her voice undistinguishable and shrill, as if she had an earthquake within her, laboring for vent; and, in short, that thus tormented with the god, whom she was not able to support, she died distracted in a few days after. For he had said before that the divineress ought to have no perturbations of mind or impure passions at the time when she was to consult the oracle, and if she had, she was no more fit to be inspired than an instrument untuned to render an harmonious sound.' And he gives us to suspect, by what he says at the close of this relation, 'That this Pythias had not lived chastely for some time before it; so that her death appears more like a punishment inflicted for loose living, by some holy Power, than the mere malignancy of a Spirit delighted naturally in mischief.' There is another observation which indeed comes nearer to their purpose, which I will digress so far as to relate, because it somewhat appertains to our own country. 'There are many islands,' says he, 'which lie scattering about Britain, after the manner of our Sporades; they are unpeopled, and some of them are called the Islands of the Heroes, or the Genii.' One Demetrius was sent by the emperor (who by computation of the time must either be Caligula or Claudius[1]) to discover those parts, and arriving at one of the islands next
- ↑ Undoubtedly much later.
