sanctuary of the Cabiri near Thebes became crazed and in that state put an end to themselves; and it was believed that if any defiled or impious person entered the sanctuary of the Eumenides at Cerynea he would go mad on the spot. [Sidenote: His belief in oracles.] Believing in the gods, Pausanias naturally believed in their official utterances, the oracles. The Delphic oracle, he thinks, foretold the battle of Leuctra and various episodes in the Messenian wars; and he appeals to one of its answers as conclusive evidence that the mother of Aesculapius was Coronis. He relates how the accidental exposure of the bones of Orpheus was followed by the destruction of the city of Libethra in accordance with a prediction of Dionysus in Thrace, and he narrates the fatal disasters which Epaminondas, Hannibal, and the Athenians incurred by misunderstanding oracular answers sent them from Delphi, Ammon, and Dodona. The history of Macedonia, its rise and its fall, had been predicted by the Sibyl, if we may believe Pausanias, who quotes her prophecy; and he assures us that the inroad of the Gauls into Asia had been foretold by Phaennis a generation before the event took place. He had himself consulted the oracle of Trophonius, and has left us a curious account of the ceremonies observed by enquirers at the shrine. In his day, he informs us, the most infallible oracle was that of Amphilochus at Mallus in Cilicia. [Sidenote: His criticism of myths.] Yet while Pausanias accepted on the whole the religion of his country, he was by no means blind to the discrepancies and improbabilities of many Greek myths and legends, and he speaks somewhat disdainfully of the unquestioning faith of the multitude in the stories they had heard from childhood. “Falsehood in general,” he says, “passes current among the multitude because they are ignorant of history and believe all that they have heard from childhood in choirs and tragedies.” And again he observes that “it is not easy to persuade the vulgar to change their opinions.” From the former of these passages it appears that Pausanias was little disposed to place implicit faith in the utterances of the poets on matters of tradition. Elsewhere he intimates his doubts still more plainly. Speaking of the hydra, which he maintains had not more than one head, he says that the poet Pisander multiplied the creature’s heads “to make the monster more terrific, and to add to the dignity of his own verses.” Again, he mentions that the poets have declared certain objects of art to be works of Hephaestus, and that obsequious public opinion has chimed in with them, but he for his part rejects all such relics as spurious save one. The only poet to whose authority he inclined to bow was Homer, whose testimony he often appeals to with respect. He held that many old stories were true enough in their origin, but had fallen into discredit by reason of the distortions and