Nor were such grisly exploits confined to Thessaly, for in Syria, as Marcassus tells us, troops of witches haunted the battle-field during the night, devouring the bodies of the slain. During the day they took the shape of wolves or hyenas, thus providing a link with the more common phases of lycanthropy. These same witches were definitely human beings, as distinct from spirits, and it was comparatively easy for anyone who so wished, and could obtain the necessary recipe, to follow their example. Such magic salves were usually composed of narcotics, among them being aconite, belladonna, opium, and hyoscyamus, boiled down with the fat of a little child, murdered for the purpose, and with the blood of a bat added. They needed careful and expert usage, however, lest such a mischance might befall as occurred to "the Golden Ass," who, seeking to become an owl, found himself to be no more than a donkey. While the Thessalian witches paid more attention to the toxicological aspect of Hecate's teaching, the pythons exploited one no less important--the prediction of events to come. Every prudent Greek consulted the oracle at Delphi, before undertaking anything of importance--the oracle displaying equal prudence in the non-committal vagueness of her replies. Theseus, who, on the death of his father, wished to introduce a new form of Government in Athens, sought advice thereon, and received as his answer:-- Son of the Pitthean maid, To your town the terms and fates My father gives of many states. Be not anxious or afraid, The bladder will not fail to swim On the waves that compass him. To Philip of Macedon, again, the utterance of the Pythian priestess ran:-- The Battle on Thermodon that shall be Safe at a distance I desire to see. Far like an eagle watching in the air, Conquered shall weep, and conqueror perish there. That even oracles were--and perhaps are--open to human influence may be deduced from Demosthenes' irreverent suggestion that the prophetess had been tampered with in Philip's favour. The manner of delivering an oracle doubtless gave a ritualistic example to the witches of later ages, and, as such, may be quoted. After the offering of certain sacrifices, the priestess took her seat on a tripod placed over a fissure in the ground at the centre of the temple. From this came forth an intoxicating gas which, when she breathed it, caused her to utter wild, whirling words. These were interpreted by the attendant priest and by him handed to the applicant, having been first written down in hexameters by an official poet. Divination in Greece thus owed as much to the witch as to the goddess, and it should be noted that, in the case of the Delphic oracle at any rate, the priest acted as go-between, the Pythia being only an item of the oracular machinery.