contracted and condensed by the cold, whereas in hot times it loses power, and becomes attenuated and feeble; again, that in sunlight it is less efficient, attacking the fuel sluggishly and consuming it more slowly. Most likely of all, the true cause may be in the oil. There is no improbability in thinking that it was in old days unsubstantial and watery, being produced from a young plant, but afterwards, when well matured and condensed, it had more force and better nutritive power in an equal quantity. I am supposing that we are bound to save this hypothesis for the servants of Ammon, absurd and unnatural as it is.’ [Sidenote: E] V. When Ammonius had done, ‘Rather’, said I, ‘tell us all about the oracle, Cleombrotus; for the old reputation of the divine power there was great, nowadays it seems to be somewhat dwindling.’ As Cleombrotus was silent, and cast his eyes downwards, Demetrius said: ‘There is no need to raise questions about what is happening there, when we see the growing enfeeblement of the oracles nearer home, I might rather say the cessation of all save one or two; the question is from what cause has their power thus passed away? Why mention others, when Boeotia, in old times full of voices with her oracles, has now been quite deserted, as though by sources of [Sidenote: F] water, and a great drought of prophecy has possessed the land? Nowhere, except round Lebadeia, has Boeotia anything to give to those who wish to draw water from prophetic art; for the rest, silence or utter desertion is the order. Yet in the times of the Persian wars it was in no less repute than that of [Sidenote: 412] Amphiaraus, and Mys, as it would seem, tried both.[132] So the prophet of the Ptoan Oracle, in former times accustomed to use Aeolian, uttered a response in the tongue of the Barbarians, which none of the local persons present understood, but Mys alone; however, the Barbarian caught the inspiration, and the injunction did not need to be translated into Greek. As to the slave sent to the shrine of Amphiaraus, he seemed to see in his sleep a minister of the God, who first spoke to turn him out telling him that the God was not present, then used his hands to push him, and, when he persisted, took a great stone and smote him on the head. This was all a [Sidenote: B] prediction in act of what was to come about; for Mardonius was defeated by the Greeks under no king but a regent and a lieutenant of a king, and he fell struck by a stone,[133] just as the Lydian appeared in his sleep to be struck. At that time the oracle at Tegyrae was flourishing; there they say that the God was born, and of the streams which flow past it one, as some tell, is called the “Palm”, the other the “Olive” to this day. Again, in the Persian wars, when Echecrates was prophet, the God promised victory and might in war to [Sidenote: C] the Greeks. Then in the Peloponnesian war, when the Delians had been turned out of their