The temple and oracle of the Branchidæ, in the neighbourhood of Miletus, so called from Branchus, the son of Apollo, was very ancient, and in great esteem with all the Ionians and Dorians of Asia.(85) Xerxes, in his return from Greece, burnt this temple, after the priests had delivered its treasures to him. That prince, in return, granted them an establishment in the remotest parts of Asia, to secure them against the vengeance of the Greeks. After the war was over, the Milesians reestablished that temple with a magnificence which, according to Strabo, surpassed that of all the other temples of Greece. When Alexander the Great had overthrown Darius, he utterly destroyed the city where the priests Branchidæ had settled, of which their descendants were at that time in actual possession, punishing in the children the sacrilegious perfidy of their fathers. Tacitus relates something very singular, though not very probable, of the oracle of Claros, a town of Ionia, in Asia Minor, near Colophon.(86) “Germanicus,” says he, “went to consult Apollo at Claros. It is not a woman that gives the answers there, as at Delphi, but a man, chosen out of certain families, and almost always of Miletus. It is sufficient to let him know the number and names of those who come to consult him. After which he retires into a cave, and having drunk of the waters of a spring within it, he delivers answers in verse upon what the persons have in their thoughts, though he is often ignorant, and knows nothing of composing in measure. It is said, that he foretold to Germanicus his sudden death, but in dark and ambiguous terms, according to the custom of oracles.” I omit a great number of other oracles, to proceed to the most famous of them all. It is very obvious that I mean the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. He was worshipped there under the name of the Pythian, a title derived from the serpent Python, which he had killed, or from a Greek word, that signifies to inquire, πυθέσθαι, because people came thither to consult him. From thence the Delphic priestess was called Pythia, and the games there celebrated, the Pythian games. Delphi was an ancient city of Phocis in Achaia. It stood upon the declivity, and about the middle, of the mountain Parnassus, built upon a small extent of even ground, and surrounded with precipices, that fortified it without the help of art.