Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, and several other authors relate, that a herd of goats discovered the oracle of Delphos, or of the Pythian Apollo. When a goat happened to come near enough the cavern to breathe air that passed out of it, she returned skipping and bounding about, and her voice articulated some extraordinary sounds; which having been observed by the keepers, they went to look in, and were seized with a fury which made them jump about, and foretel future events. Coretas, as Plutarch tells, was the name of the goat-herd who discovered the oracle. One of the guardians of Demetrius, coming too near the mouth of the cavern, was suffocated by the force of the exhalations, and died suddenly. The orifice or vent-hole of the cave was covered with a tripod consecrated to Apollo, on which the priestesses, called Pythonesses,[16] sat, to fill themselves with the prophetic vapour, and to conceive the spirit of divination, with the fervor that made them know futurity, and foretel it in Greek hexameters. Plutarch says, that, on the cessation of oracles, a Pythoness was so excessively tormented by the vapour, and suffered such violent convulsions, that all the priests ran away, and she died soon after. CEREMONIES PRACTISED ON CONSULTING ORACLES. Pausanias describes the ceremonies that were practiced for consulting the oracle of Trophonius. Every man that went down into his cave, never laughed his whole life after. This gave occasion to the proverbial saying concerning those of a melancholy air: "He has consulted Trophonius." Plato relates, that the two brothers, Agamedes and Trophonius, having built the temple of Apollo, and asked the god for a reward what he thought of most advantage to men, both died in the night that succeeded their prayer. Pausanias gives us a quite different account. In the palace there built for the King Hyrieus, they so laid a stone, that it might be taken away, and in the night they crept in through the hole they had thus contrived, to steal the king's treasures. The king observing the quantity of his gold diminished, though no locks nor seals had been broken open, fixed traps about his coffers, and Agamedes being caught in one of them, Trophonius cut off his head to prevent his discovering him. Trophonius having disappeared that moment, it was given out that the earth had swallowed him on the same spot; and impious superstition went so far as to place this wicked wretch in the rank of the gods, and to consult his oracle with ceremonies equally painful and mysterious.