■i 56 APPENDIX concerning 



leaft were imagined to do fo by the deluded votaries. The re- 

 fponfes were generally conceived in fuch equivocal terms as left 

 it in the power of the Hierophant to explain them in fuch a 

 manner as might fave the credit of the Pythian god, be the ifTue 

 what it might. Numberlefs fables were circulated among the 

 Greeks, with relation to the portents and prodigies which 

 prompted the people in the neighbourhood of Parnaflus to erect 

 this facred edifice, and which attended the erecting of it. For 

 my own part, 1 am fully convinced that it was a Hellenic efta- 

 blilhment, founded by the emigrants of that colony from the 

 neighbourhood of Dodona, and actually copied from that ora- 

 cle. Such changes were probably made as experience had 

 pointed out for a courfe of feveral ages, during which the mo- 

 ther Oracle had been in reputation. I mean not to compile a 

 hiftory of this oracle ; my intention is only to fhew, that the 

 inftitution of the council of the Amphictyones is actually con- 

 nected with this oracular eftablifhment. 



The concourfe to the temple of Delphi foon became im- 

 menfe. Its fituation was happily chofen for that purpole *. 

 It lay nearly in the centre of thofe petty tribes which after- 

 wards formed the Amphictyonic alTociation. Thefe flates, as 

 was obferved in the dilTertation, became jealous of the growing 

 power of the oriental colonies. Delphi appeared to them a con- 

 venient place for holding their conventions, agreed upon in or- 

 der to concert meafures for their mutual fecurity. Both its 

 fanctity and centrical pofition pointed it out as a place altoge- 

 ther 



* Strabo, uhi fupra. It lay nearly in the centre of Greece, but the Greeks 

 entertained an opinion, that it was fituated in the centre of the world — o/x.tp<xxo( tv( 

 oiKxvftnm;, the navel of the habitable world. So Strabo, lib.ix. p. 419. Sophoci. 

 in Oedip. Tyr. Eurip. in Medea, et alibi. Plut. de defecl:. Orac. fub Init. 

 Paus. lib. x. p. 835. Pind. Pyth. iv. 6. It was originally called Lycoraea. Two 

 Egyptian words compofe it. Awe in many languages fignifies light, and £lp fig- 

 nines the Sun. 



