A thousand frauds and impostures, openly detected at Delphi, and every where else, had not opened men’s eyes, nor in the least diminished the credit of the oracles; which subsisted upwards of two thousand years, and was carried to an inconceivable height, even in the minds of the greatest men, the most profound philosophers, the most powerful princes, and generally among the most civilized nations, and such as valued themselves most upon their wisdom and policy. The estimation they were in, may be judged from the magnificence of the temple of Delphi, and the immense riches amassed in it through the superstitious credulity of nations and monarchs. The temple of Delphi having been burnt about the fifty-eighth Olympiad, the Amphictyons, those celebrated judges of Greece, took upon themselves the care of rebuilding it.(103) They agreed with an architect for three hundred talents, which amounts to nine hundred thousand livres.(104) The cities of Greece were to furnish that sum. The inhabitants of Delphi were taxed a fourth part of it, and collected contributions in all parts, even in foreign nations, for that service. Amasis, at that time king of Egypt, and the Grecian inhabitants of his country, contributed considerable sums towards it. The Alcmæonidæ, a potent family of Athens, took upon themselves the conduct of the building, and made it more magnificent, by considerable additions of their own, than had been proposed in the model. Gyges, king of Lydia, and Crœsus, one of his successors, enriched the temple of Delphi with an incredible number of presents. Many other princes, cities, and private persons, by their example, in a kind of emulation of each other, had heaped up in it tripods, vases, tables, shields, crowns, chariots, and statues of gold and silver of all sizes, equally infinite in number and value. The presents of gold which Crœsus alone made to this temple, amounted, according to Herodotus,(105) to upwards of 254 talents; that is, about 762,000 French livres;(106) and perhaps those of silver to as much. Most of these presents were in being in the time of Herodotus. Diodorus Siculus,(107) adding those of other princes to them, makes their amount ten thousand talents, or thirty millions of livres.(108)