The Epirotes, both at home and abroad, sacrifice to Apollo, and solemnise with extreme magnificence a feast yearly in his honour, There is a grove among them sacred to the god, and inclosed with a wall, within which are dragons, pleasing to the god. Hither a sacred virgin comes alone, naked, and presents food to the dragons. The Epirotes say that these are descended from the Delphic python. If they regarded the virgin ministering to them with favour, and took the food promptly, they were believed to portend a fertile and healthful year; if they were rude towards her, and would not accept the proffered food, some predicted, or at least expected, the contrary for the coming year. BOOK II. ch. 16.--_Dragon in Lavinium._ There is a peculiar divination of the dragon, for in Lavinium, a town of the Latins but in Lavinium, there is a large and dense sacred grove, and near it the shrine of the Argolic Juno. Within the grove is a cave and deep den, the lair of a dragon. Sacred virgins enter this grove on stated days, who carry a barley cake in their hands, with bandaged eyes. A certain divine afflatus leads them accurately to the den, and gently, and step by step, they proceed without hindrance, and as if their eyes were uncovered. If they are virgins, the dragon admits the food as pure and fit for a deity. If otherwise, it does not touch it, perceiving and divining them to be impure. Ants, for the sake of cleansing the place, carry from the grove the cake left by the vitiated virgin, broken into little pieces, so that they may easily carry it. When this happens, it is perceived by the inhabitants, and those who have entered are pointed out and examined, and whoever proves to have forfeited her virginity is punished with the penalties appointed by the laws. "The masculine sex also seems to be privileged by nature among brutes, inasmuch as the male dragon is distinguished by a crest and hairs, with a beard." BOOK XVI. ch. 39. Onesicritus Astypalæus writes that there were two dragons in India [nurtured by an Indian dancer], one of forty-six and the other of eighty cubits, and that Alexander (Philip's son) earnestly endeavoured to see them. It is affirmed in Egyptian books that, during the reign of Philadelphus, two dragons were brought from Æthiopia into Philadelphia alive, one forty, the other thirty cubits in magnitude. Three were also brought in the time of King Evergetis, one nine and another seven cubits. The Egyptians say that the third was preserved with great care in the temple of Æsculapius. It is also said that there are asps of four cubits in length. Those who write the history of the affairs of Chios say that a dragon of extreme magnitude was produced in a valley, densely crowded and gloomy with tall trees, of the Mount Pelienæus in that island, whose hissing struck the Chians with horror.