In the time of Xerxes, Delphi had been for several hundred years in the enjoyment of its fame as a place of divine inspiration. It was said to have been originally discovered in the following manner. Some herdsmen on the mountains, watching their flocks, observed one day a number of goats performing very strange and unaccountable antics among some crevices in the rocks, and, going to the place, they found that a mysterious wind was issuing from the crevices, which produced an extraordinary exhilaration on all who breathed it. Every thing extraordinary was thought, in those days, to be supernatural and divine, and the fame of this discovery was spread every where, the people supposing that the effect produced upon the men and animals by breathing the mysterious air was a divine inspiration. A temple was built over the spot, priests and priestesses were installed, a city began to rise, and in process of time Delphi became the most celebrated oracle in the world; and as the vast treasures which had been accumulated there consisted mainly of gifts and offerings consecrated to a divine and sacred service, they were all understood to be under divine protection. They were defended, it is true, in part by the inaccessibleness of the position of Delphi, and by the artificial fortifications which had been added from time to time to increase the security, but still more by the feeling which every where prevailed, that any violence offered to such a shrine would be punished by the gods as sacrilege. The account of the manner in which Xerxes was repulsed, as related by the ancient historians, is somewhat marvelous. We, however, in this case, as in all others, transmit the story to our readers as the ancient historians give it to us. The main body of the army pursued its way directly southward toward the city of Athens, which was now the great object at which Xerxes aimed. A large detachment, however, separating from the main body, moved more to the westward, toward Delphi. Their plan was to plunder the temples and the city, and send the treasures to the king. The Delphians, on hearing this, were seized with consternation. They made application themselves to the oracle, to know what they were to do in respect to the sacred treasures. They could not defend them, they said, against such a host, and they inquired whether they should bury them in the earth, or attempt to remove them to some distant place of safety. The oracle replied that they were to do nothing at all in respect to the sacred treasures. The divinity, it said, was able to protect what was its own. They, on their part, had only to provide for themselves, their wives, and their children.