When they prayed they often made the god an offering of animals, fruit, honey, or wine in order to please him so that he would grant their prayer. The wine they poured out on the ground, thinking the god would like to have them do this. The animals they killed and then burned by building a fire under them on an altar. This was called a sacrifice. Their idea seemed to be that even though the gods could not eat the meat of the animals nor drink the wine themselves, they liked to have something _given up_ for them. And so even to-day we say a person makes a sacrifice when he _gives up_ something for another. When the Greeks were sacrificing they usually looked for some sign from the god to see whether he was pleased or not with the sacrifice and whether he would answer their prayer and do what they asked him or not. A flock of birds flying overhead, a flash of lightning, or any unusual happening they thought was a sign which meant something. Such signs were called “omens.” Some omens were good and showed that the god would do what he was asked, and some omens were bad and showed he would not. Omens were very much like some of the signs that people believe in even to-day when they say it is a good sign or good luck if you see the new moon over the right shoulder or a bad sign or bad luck if you spill the salt. Not so very far from Athens is a mountain called Mount Parnassus. On the side of Mount Parnassus was a town called Delphi. In the town of Delphi there was a crack in the ground, from which gas came forth, somewhat as it does from cracks in a volcano. This gas was supposed to be the breath of the god Apollo, and there was a woman priest called a priestess who sat on a three-legged stool or tripod over the crack so as to breathe the gas. She would become delirious, as some people do when they are sick with fever and we say they are “out of their heads,” and when people asked her questions she would mutter strange things and a priest would tell what she meant. This place was called the Delphic Oracle, and people would go long distances to ask the oracle questions, for they thought Apollo was answering them. The Greeks went to the oracle whenever they wanted to know what to do or what was going to happen, and they firmly believed in what the oracle told them. Usually, however, the answers of the oracle were like a riddle, so that they could be understood in more than one way. For instance, a king who was about to go to war with another king asked the oracle who would win. The oracle replied, “A great kingdom will fall.” What do you suppose the oracle meant? Such an answer, which you can understand in two or three ways, is still called “oracular.” 11 A Fairy-Tale War