Diviners are either free and independent seers, soothsayers, fortune-tellers, mostly poverty-stricken and disreputable, though sometimes eminent and influential, like Tiresias and Epimenides; or else officials (a much smaller party) attached to some temple or government. Official soothsayers have often exercised immense power in society and politics. They are not found, of course, at the bottom of the scale of culture, where there is no government in Church or State; but in the lower barbarism, among the Bantu tribes (for example), Diviners have a highly influential station. The chief of a tribe usually has a specially trusted Diviner, and also consults others in discovering sorcerers and in forecasting the future.[363] In the Mazwaya clan of the Thonga there is an official Diviner who alone knows the exact composition of the royal “medicine,” on which the welfare of the whole tribe depends. He is very much feared: no one dares dispute with him; and he has the right of cursing even the chief himself.[364] Such a powerful subject naturally excites the jealousy of the chief, who sometimes endeavours to get into his own hands all the medicines and occult virtues possessed by any of his tribesmen.[365] The danger of opposition between Church and State was also felt in Melanesia and Polynesia; and in Hawaii it was decisively overcome; for when the oracle was to be consulted, the king, concealed in a frame of wickerwork, gave the responses himself.[366] In Greece (sixth and fifth centuries B.C.) oracles were still more powerful: the record may be read in Herodotus. The most flourishing States observed the Omens, and never ventured to go to war without consulting the Oracles; and the Oracles undertook to advise on war and peace and alliances, to settle disputed claims to sovereignty and the constitution of States, to sanction new laws and the foundation of colonies, to order the erection of new temples and even the worship of new deities—some of them of very dubious reputation: to say nothing of the infinite extent of their private practice. Their utterances were often unintelligible; they were sometimes known to have accepted bribes; yet the most enlightened people in the world continued to consult them: whether in good faith, or for their effect upon the vulgar both friends and enemies, or perhaps to share responsibility for an action with the gods, or even because one then felt more comfortable than in leaving them alone. But the diffusion of philosophy was too much for them; and, as Cicero says,[367] even the Delphic Oracle declined in reputation, not because with lapse of time the divine virtue failed of those exhalations that inspired the priestess, but when men became less credulous. Perhaps it was also because social life had become, under Roman government, safer and more settled and regular; so that a reasonable amount of foresight could be exercised without supernatural aid. Still, after the Oracles seemed to have been