Hyperochus, a native of Cumæ, has recorded that a woman called Demo, of Cumæ in the Opican district, delivered oracles after Herophile and in a similar manner. The people of Cumæ do not produce any oracle of Demo’s, but they shew a small stone urn in the temple of Apollo, wherein they say are her remains. After Demo the Hebrews beyond Palestine had a prophetess called Sabbe, whose father they say was Berosus and mother Erymanthe, but some say she was a Babylonian Sibyl, others an Egyptian.
Phaennis, (the daughter of the king of the Chaones), and the Peleæ at Dodona, also prophesied by divine inspiration, but were not called Sibyls. As to the age and oracles of Phaennis, one will find upon inquiry that she was a contemporary of Antiochus, who seized the kingdom after taking Demetrius prisoner. As to the Peleades, they were they say earlier than Phemonoe, and were the first women that sang the following lines:
“Zeus was, Zeus is, Zeus shall be. O great Zeus!
Earth yields us fruits, let us then call her Mother.”
Prophetical men, as Euclus the Cyprian, and the Athenian Musæus the son of Antiophemus, and Lycus the son of Pandion, as well as Bacis the Bœotian, were they say inspired by Nymphs. All their oracular utterances except those of Lycus I have read.
Such are the women and men who up to my time have been said to have been prophetically inspired: and as time goes on there will perhaps be other similar cases.[98]
[97] The text is somewhat uncertain here. I have tried to extract the best sense.
[98] “Qui hoc et similia putant dicuntque Pausaniam opposuisse Christianis, hos velim explicare causam, cur Pausanias tecte tantum in illos invadere, neque usquam quidquam aperte contra eos dicere ausus sit.” Siebelis.
CHAPTER XIII.
The brazen head of the Pæonian bison was sent to Delphi by Dropion, the son of Deon, king of the Pæonians. These bisons are most difficult of all beasts to capture alive, for no nets are strong enough to hold them. They are hunted in the following manner. When the hunters have found a slope terminating in a hollow, they first of all fence it all round with a palisade, they then cover the slope and level ground near the bottom with newly stripped hides, and if they chance to be short of hides, then they make old dry skins slippery with oil. The most skilful horsemen then drive these bisons to this place that I have described, and slipping on the first hides they roll down the slope till they get to the level ground at the bottom. There they leave them at first, but on the 4th or 5th day, when hunger and weakness has subdued their spirit somewhat, those who are skilled in taming them offer them, while they are still lying there, pinenuts after first removing the husks, for they will at first touch no other kind of food, and at last they bind them and lead them off. This is how they capture them.