The oracular power of dreams, and the sanctuaries where they are supposed to be dispersed, have been diffusely treated of in the compilations of Van Dale and other learned writers. These species of oracles were in high estimation, even in the most enlightened and flourishing periods of Greece; it is somewhat singular, however, that no people cherished them more devoutly than the Spartans, who depended altogether upon oracles in their weightiest affairs of state. Of all the civilized nations of Greece, Sparta always approved herself the most superstitious; her advancement was rather the effect of her policy, than of any stimulus given to her civilization by science. This consideration will enable us to account for the powerful influence which, even in the latest stages of Lacedemonian story, attached to the responses of Passiphae, a local goddess of Thalame, but little known beyond the confines of Laconia. The extent of their influence is particularly evident in the history of Agis and Cleomenes.[94] The greater part of these somnambulistic oracles were ascribed to persons who had distinguished themselves as great dreamers when on earth. In old times there was a description of prophets who pretended to prepare themselves for the foreboding of future events through the medium of sacred dreams. They were classed under the appellation of [Greek: Oneiroploi], to which rank the most celebrated Vates of the heroic age belonged. In this way it was that a sacred spot was dedicated to Calchus, whence he gave his responses in dreams after his decease: this spot lay in Daunia, on the coast of the Adriatic. The supplicant's offices began with the offering up of a ram, on whose skin he laid himself down, and in this situation, received the instruction he sought for.[95] Amphilocus, a contemporary soothsayer, who accompanied the Epigoni in the first Theban war, had a similar oracle at Mallos, in Cilicia, which Pausanias asserts, even at the close of the second century, to have been the most credible of his age; it is also mentioned by Dion Cassius, in his history of Commodus.[96]