Ablancourt observes that the study or research of the meaning of _Oracles_ was but a fruitless thing; and they were never understood until they were accomplished. It is related by Historians, that Crœsus was tricked by the ambiguity and equivocation of the oracle. Κροισος Άλυν διαβας μεγαλην αρχην καταλνσει. rendered thus in Latin:— _Crœsus Halym superans magnam pervertet opum vim._ Oracle is also used for the Demon who gave the answer, and the place where it was given. (Vide DEMON.) The principal oracles of antiquity are that of Abæ, mentioned by Herodotus; that of Amphiarus; that of the Branchidæ, at Didymus; that of the Camps, at Lacedemon; that of Dodona; that of Jupiter Ammon; that of Nabarca, in the Country of the Anariaci, near the Caspian sea; that of Trophonius, mentioned by Herodotus; that of Chrysopolis; that of Claros, in Ionia; that of Mallos; that of Patarea; that of Pella, in Macedonia; that of Phaselides, in Cilicia; that of Sinope, in Paphlagonia; that of Orpheus’s head, mentioned by Philostratus in his life of Appolonius, &c. But, of all others, the oracle of _Apollo Pythius_, at Delphi, was the most celebrated; it was, in short, consulted always as a _dernier ressort_, in cases of emergency, by most of the princes of those ages.— Mr. Bayle observes, that at first, it gave its answers in verse; and that at length it fell to prose, in consequence of the people beginning to laugh at the poorness of its versification. Among the more learned, it is a pretty general opinion that all the oracles were mere cheats and impostures; calculated either to serve the avaricious ends of the heathen priests, or the political views of the princes. Bayle positively asserts, they were mere human artifices, in which the devil had no hand. In this opinion he is strongly supported by Van Dale, a Dutch physician, and M. Fontenelle, who have expressly written on the subject. There are two points at issue on the subject of _oracles_; viz. whether they were human or diabolical machines; and whether or not they ceased upon the publication and preaching of the Gospel? Plutarch wrote a treatise on the ceasing of some _oracles_: and Van Dale has a volume to prove that they did not cease at the coming of Christ; but that many of them had ceased long before the coming of that time, and that others held out till the fall of Paganism, under the Empire of Theodosius the Great, and when it was dissipated, these institutions could no longer resist. Van Dale was answered by a German, one Mœbius, professor of Theology, at Leipsic, in 1685. Fontenelle espoused Van Dale’s system, and improved upon it in his history of oracles; wherein he exposed the weakness of the argument used by many writers in behalf of Christianity, drawn from the ceasing of _oracles_.