"As soon as the priestess had pronounced this, I fell upon my face, and besought the deity to be propitious to me in everything. The crowd who surrounded the shrine, joined in praising the deity for having deigned to answer me on my first entreaty; they congratulated me, and paid me great respect, saying, that I seemed to be the greatest favourite with the deity who had appeared there since Lycurgus,[26] a Spartan. They permitted me at my request to inhabit the precincts of the temple, and passed a decree that I should be maintained at the public expense. My situation, in short, was a very agreeable one; I either assisted at the ceremonies and sacrifices which were every day performed and offered by strangers as well as natives, or conversed with the philosophers, for many of this description flocked to Delphi. The city[27] is in truth a university, inspired by the deity who presides over inspiration and the muses. Various subjects were discussed; sometimes the manner of our religious rites in Egypt, and why certain animals were counted sacred more than others; and the different histories which belonged to each. Another inquired about the construction of the Pyramids and the Catacombs.[28] In short, there was nothing relative to Egypt which they did not scrutinize into; for it is wonderful how the Greeks listen to, and are delighted with, accounts of that country. At length one among the more accomplished of them touched upon the Nile, its fountains, and inundations, wondering why it alone, of all rivers, should in the summer time swell and overflow. I told them what I knew on that subject, which I had gathered from the sacred books which the priests alone are permitted to consult. I related how it had its rise on the south-east confines of Libya and Ethiopia; that it increased in the summer, not because its waters, as some supposed, were driven back by the Etesian[29] winds, but because these winds, about the time of the summer solstice, drive the clouds before them from the northern into the southern parts, which are by this means collected in the torrid zone, where their farther motion is stopped by the extreme vehemence of the heat. They are then condensed, and pressed by degrees, till they dissolve, and fall in copious showers. These swell the river till it disdains its banks, and, bursting over Egypt like a sea, fertilizes the plains it overflows. Its waters are very sweet to drink, as they are furnished by the rains from heaven; they are not hot to the touch as they are higher up, but nevertheless are tepid; they exhale no vapours like other rivers, which they certainly would do, if (as some learned Grecians suppose) their rise was owing to the melting of the snows.