“Near the statue is that altar which is esteemed one of the wonders of the world. It is not gold or marble which is admired in it; horns of animals, forcibly bent, and artfully interwoven, form a whole equally solid and regular. Some priests, whose employment it is to adorn it with flowers and boughs, made us observe the ingenious contexture of its parts. “‘It was the god himself,’ exclaimed a young priest, ‘who in his childhood interwove them as you see. Those menacing horns, which you behold suspended on the wall, and those of which the altar is composed, are the spoils of the wild goats which fed on Mount Cynthus, and which fell beneath the shafts of Diana. Here the eye meets nothing but prodigies. This palm tree, which displays its branches over our heads, is the sacred tree that supported Latona when she brought forth the divinities we adore. “‘The form of this altar has become celebrated by a problem in geometry, of which an exact solution will perhaps never be given. The plague laid waste our island, and Greece was ravaged by war. The oracle, being consulted by our ancestors, declared that these calamities would cease if they could make this altar double the size it is of at present. They imagined it would be sufficient to make it twice as large every way; but they found, with surprise, that they were constructing an enormous mass that would contain the altar in question eight times. After other attempts, equally fruitless, they sent to consult Plato, then just returned from Egypt; who told their messengers, that the god, by this oracle, sported with the ignorance of the Greeks, and exhorted them to cultivate the accurate sciences, rather than to be continually occupied in dissensions and wars. At the same time he proposed a simple and mechanical method of resolving the problem; but the plague had ceased when his answer arrived.’ “These words, though pronounced in a low voice, engaged the attention of a citizen of Delos, who approached us, and showing us an altar less embellished than the former: ‘This,’ said he, ‘is never drenched with the blood of victims; on this the devouring flame is never kindled. Hither Pythagoras came, to offer, after the example of the people, cakes, barley, and wheat; and beyond all doubt the god was better pleased with the enlightened worship of that great man than with all those streams of blood with which our altars are perpetually inundated.’