This temple must however have lost much of its dignity, when it condescended, for the sake of rich offerings from the Lydian monarch, to answer enigmatically the insidious questions which Crœsus put to the Grecian oracles. In earlier times a Greek would not have dared, without the greatest faith in its responses, to approach the temple, which had regulated almost the whole political state of Greece, conducted its colonies, instituted the sacred armistices, and established by its authority the legislation of Lycurgus. For in general the god had not to announce what _would_, but what _should_ take place; and he frequently declared events not as to happen independently of his injunction, but as the consequence of his answers. All Dorians were in a certain state of dependence on the Pythian temple; and as long as that race possessed the ascendency in Greece, the hearth in the centre of the earth (μεσόμφαλος ἑστία), with its eternal fire, at Pytho,(1401) was considered as the Prytaneum and religious centre of the whole of Greece.(1402) 9. In ancient Greece, however, prophecy was by no means derived altogether from Apollo, but merely that species of it which proceeded from a rapturous and entranced state of the soul. Nevertheless, the enthusiastic and imaginative frame of mind, in which cool grottos, with their flowing waters and hollow echoes, seemed to transport the votary into a former world, was derived from the Nymphs: and the Bacidæ, who were considered as under the influence of the Nymphs (νυμφόπληκτοι), have no more to do with Apollo than the σεληνιακοὶ, among whom Musæus is reckoned. Of the various modes of divination from omens,(1403) only two or three were referred to this god, and that rather accidentally than in accordance with any fixed principle:(1404) for example, divination from lightning,(1405) from birds,(1406) from sacrifices,(1407) and from the drawing of lots, which, however, was either disdained by him, as below his dignity, or transferred to Hermes.(1408) Connecting the idea of Apollo, which we have now acquired, with our preceding inquiries, we find the whole combine in an easy and natural manner. Apollo, as a divine hero, overcomes every obstacle to the order and laws of heaven; and those are heavenly regulations and laws which he proclaims as the prophet of Zeus. By these, also, tranquillity, brightness, and harmony, are every where established, and every thing destructive of them is removed. The belief in a fixed system of laws, of which Apollo was the executor, formed the foundation of all prophecy in his worship.